rtlfl, 'i;:. <■. .■ 

1.1/, ;•■■.. ;■ ' 












lit''' ' > 



»;11 









ini;-'.' :'-■■ ■■;■, 
fen^^irl-'o'^pi :;,■■■ 

i^'^MV^^H lilt) ::■'*. 



n'.:;;;-.! 






ill 



,^> -'-K 






</' <\ 



'^'•i^j'^ 






■v 



A- 



o. 



0^ -^^- . -^ V^ 



1 /J 






,*^ •^■^. 



\' 






»/ 1 \ - \V 



Vv^'^/ 



<\ 



^..■i' 






■^ 



.Oo. 



^0^ ^/:^ ^" '^^ .^ 



'/' 



V- v^ 



,.^ -r. 









% 



^ ,.,*■ 









'/ s- 



'=-;-r^t 







.V 






'^"v. 



o5 ^ri. : 






r> 'UN' 



-3^ 



^^■^ ■'*.. ', 



.0 o 



^■^^ 



- V- 






,n\' r. 






*;y-^. s .^^ 



. .V 



-^ 






^, 





0- ,<- 




'^^ 




.^r^' 




''.>. .^ 


#\0 x^^' 


'■'^- ^ • 




-^^ 


V c^ 


■^r 






/ • ■■ \ - ^"^ 


<■>• 






A C> ' .'>'*' 








"^ -er. i^^^^^"^- 














0^ s 




r- 


' IV it 



A^ 



.^ -r, 



r^, <^\^ 



.^^ 



Ji 



•^ 






•-•^r 



-^.^^ 



A^ 



■u .<p- 



\> 



v-"^^ 






o5 -r , 






aV -p. 






5. ^'/ 



.-^ 



'^ c « *" ^ /; 









A 



.x^'^ 



<. X 



■'^' ^- ;, 


/ 


.N^" 


X/ 


0^'' 






% 


V 






S' 











-t "-^ 









L^ V. 



.^\^ 






V 



"^ ,<^' 



-:$-. d*^ 



v\- 



-:/. ' ., ^ ^ 



/^Cc^r/ /TZ^^^^^C A 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



JOHN S T a A R T MILL 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



JOHN STUART MILL, 



BY / 

EDWARD JENKS, 

B.A., LL.B., 

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, 
and Lecturer at Petnbroke College, Cambridge. 



GEORGE ALLEN, 

SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 
1888. 






7? ^^33 



9558 




Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 



TO MY FRIENDS 

THE RESIDENTS AT TOYNBEE HALL, WHITECHAPEL, 

WHO HAVE GRACIOUSLY ALLOWED ME TO SHARE IN THEIR GOOD WORK, 

THIS ATTEMPT TO ESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE 

OF TWO GREAT SOCIAL TEACHERS 

IS (WITHOUT PERMISSION) 

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



" The amelioration of outward circvimstances will be the 
effect, but catt never be the means, of mental and moral 
improvement." — Pestalozzi. 



PREFACE. 



IT is necessary to say a few wcrds on the cir- 
cumstances in which this essay was written. 

In the year 1848, the friends and admirers of the 
Rev. Charles Webb Le Bas, most of them members 
of the Civil Service of India, and formerly students 
at Haileybury College, founded an annual prize in 
the University of Cambridge for an essay upon 
some subject of general literature, to be awarded 
in memory of Mr. Le Bas. 

The regulations adopted by the senate confine 
the competition for the prize to graduates of the 
university of not more than three years' standing 
from their first degree, and require the successful 
essay to be published. 

The prize was this year awarded to my essay 
upon the subject ''Thomas Carlyle and John 
Stuart Mill"; and in compliance with the regula- 
tions I now commit it to the press. I have no 



viii Preface. 

reason to suppose that it will escape the fate of 
most oth^r prize essays, unless perchance the supe- 
rior humanity of the subject may attract a notice 
which its treatment will hardly justify. 

As frequent quotations from the works of Carlyle 
and Mill naturally occur in these pages, it may be 
well to state here, once for all, the editions to which 
reference is made. The case of Carlyle presents 
little difficulty. I have used the uniform " People's 
Edition," published in thirty-one volumes by Messrs. 
Chapman and Hall, under the author's direct super- 
vision. The references in the notes are made, not 
to the volumes in the series, but to those of the 
work in question ; but where, as in the case of the 
Miscellanies, several works are contained in one 
volume, the reference to the pages follows the volume, 
so that the number quoted is always that actually 
appearing above the passage referred to. This 
course has, after considerable experience, proved to 
me the simplest in practice. The two volumes of 
.' Reminiscences^ posthumously published, are referred 
to by the edition of Professor Norton, brought out 
by Messrs. Macmillan last year; and Mr. Froude's 
Biography is, in both parts, the first edition, pub- 
lished by Messrs. Longmans. To distinguish briefly 
between the two parts of this Biography, I have 
referred to them as "First Forty" and "Second 
Forty" respectively. 



Preface, ix 

Unhappily there is no uniform edition of Mill's 
works. It becomes necessary therefore to specify 
in detail the editions referred to in the footnotes. 
They are as follows : — 

Principles of Political \ ,y . ^ a.^ ^ o o 

-^ -^ j (Longmans) 2 vols, 8th ed. 1878 

Exami?iation of Sir \ 

William Ha^nilton'' s > ,, 5th ed. 1878 

Philosophy. ) 

Dissertations and Dis-^ „ 3 vols, 2nd ed. 1867 

ciissions, ) 4th vol. 1875 

Representative Govern- | ^^^ ^^ ^g^^ 

ment. ) 

Autobiography, (Longmans) 8th ed. 1886 

System of Logic. „ People's ed. 1884 

The Subjection of\ ^^ ^^_ ^gg 

Wo7nen. ) 

Utilitarianis7n. „ 9th ed. 1885 

Conite and Positivism. (Triibner) 1865 

Irish Land Question. (Longmans) 2nd ed. 1870 

O71 Liberty. „ People's ed. 1884 

Itiaugttral Address. „ „ 1884 

Thoughts on Parlia-) ^^^^^ ^g 

mentary Reform. ) 

In extenuation of the paucity of references to 
other writers, I may perhaps be allowed to mention 
that the essay was written in Germany, beyond the 
reach o^ English libraries. 

E. J. 

4, Essex Court, Temple, 
May 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

CAP. I. INTRODUCTORY . I 

„ II. THE PROPHET OF THE LATTER DAYS . . 8 

„ III. THE APOSTLE OF BENTHAMISM . . . . IO5 

,, IV. THE potter's CLAY 1 58 

,, V. PARERGA 205 

„ VI. GLEANINGS 234 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

WHEN an estimate is to be formed of the 
merits, and relative importance of two 
characters, the critic may choose between two 
methods of procedure. He may make resemblances, 
or, on the other hand, differences, the leading idea 
of his criticism. The decision depends in each case 
upon the nature of the subject. 

All great men are alike in the fundamental attri- 
butes of character. Greatness, by every admission, 
involves earnestness, purity, fidelity, love of truth. In 
these essentials Carlyle and Mill were alike, and it 
would be quite possible to begin a criticism with this 
idea of resemblance as a guide. 

But the point is not merely to seize an idea, but 
to seize the most fruitful idea. There may be many 
ways of climbing a mountain, but one is usually the 
best ; and it w-ill need but a short consideration to 
see that in the present case the best path is that 
which starts from the idea of difference. 

P^or if in their characters Carlyle and Mill betray 
that elementary resemblance which marks all great 

I 



2 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

men, in their work, still more in their mental atti- 
tudes, they are wide as the poles asunder. 

It ma}'' be said, without much fear of contradiction, 
that the world's thinkers fall under two great leading 
classes — men of letters and men of science. The 
former are occupied with the spiritual interests of 
mankind, its loves, hopes, fears, reverences, and 
hatreds ; they deal only with circumstances as they 
embod}'' or affect spiritual movements, and with the 
■material only as it appears in the light of the in- 
visible. Within these limits they may differ widely 
in degree, from the Dante, who follows man in his 
path to heaven or to hell, to the De Musset, who 
sings of the loves of the boudoir. 

The man of science, on the other hand, deals only 
with forms. He is concerned with discovering, ob- 
serving, classifying, and reasoning from phenomena, 
mental and physical. He sometimes claims to 
intrude into a province which the man of letters 
has treated as his own, but it is on the very ground 
that it really belongs to his kingdom as it has just 
been defined, — that it is a region, to use a technical 
phrase, not of ovra, but of (f)aiv6/jL€va. And it does 
occasionally happen that a man of unusual grasp 
combines both hemispheres in his range of vision, 
but even then it is not difficult to decide, in 
any of his utterances, upon which his eye is 
resting. 

It is hardly necessary to do more than assert that 
Carlyle belongs pre-eminently to the former of these 
two classes : Mill, as clearly, to the latter ; and thus 



Introductory. 3 

to establish a strong presumption in favour of the 
differential method. 

But there is another equally important considera- 
tion. Carlyle and Mill differed not only in the 
subjects with which they were occupied, but, as 
decidedly, in the attitudes which they adopted 
towards them. 

Carlyle, first and last, stood alone. The message 
which he brought had grown up from the depths of 
his own soul in the solitude of a Scottish wilder- 
ness. He followed no earthly banner, and fought 
in no recognised army. Even when the eyes of 
all that was most hopeful in England were turned 
towards him as to a leader and a guide, he formed 
no school or s^ct. Nor did he ever formulate a 
system. Systems were his abhorrence. Springing, 
autochthonous, from the rugged soil, he dwelt 
apart from the ways of the world, crying. Repent, 
Repent, and enforcing his message with burning 
arrows of rebuke and entreaty. Then he passed 
away, and left his words to stand or fall according 
to their own inherent worth. 

Mill was the chosen hope of a band of philoso- 
phers, who looked to him to give their work form 
and consistency. Carefully bred up in the lore of 
the Benthamite school, he imbibed with his earliest 
breath the thoughts and temper of stronger minds, 
and then, perhaps unconscious of his position, in- 
vested them with harmonious and enduring form. 
His own personality was too strong to allow him to 
be a mere compiler, but it was not strong enough to 



4 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

enable him completely to throw off influences so 
powerful as those which shaped his youth. And 
so it happened in his case, as so frequently before 
and since, that the messenger delivered his message, 
but couched in his own language, coloured by his 
own views. He was one of a band whose members 
reverenced him indeed as the most completely 
equipped and skilful soldier of the troop, but he 
was only prwius inter pares. He neither started nor 
ended a movement. When he .died his successor 
was ready, and the list of the Fathers is not closed 
yet. 

Is there a simple formula which shall express 
these two distinctions clearly, and so serve as a 
guide for our investigation ? I think such may be 
found. 

When in the days of Israel's glory there appeared 
one professing a Divine message to the souls of men, 
he was termed a prophet. No formal guarantee of 
his mission was required, he might spring from any 
rank in life, or from any country. If events justified 
his words, he was a true prophet, and as such was 
honoured ; if no confirmation of his sa3dngs ap- 
peared, he was accounted false, and spurned. But in 
either case he was a prophet, by the nature of the 
task which he undertook. Carlyle was a prophet. 

In course of time these prophecies became syste- 
matized and expounded. There came schools and 
teachers in the place of solitary figures. Shammai 
and Hillel took the places of Isaiah and Habakkuk, 
and drew learners, called, in the Hellenized language 



Introductory. 5 

of the day, " disciples," around them. But it was 
the learner's duty to do more than learn. When he 
had himself imbibed he teaching of his master, he 
was sent out to make proselytes. Thus the disciple 
in one aspect became the apostle in another. Then 
came a teacher whose influence was so great as to 
stajnp with permanency all the institutions connected 
with his name. His apostles became central figures 
in the world's history, and so it comes to pass that 
no better name than that of apostle can be found for 
one who goes abroad to convert the world to the 
teaching of his master. Such was Mill. 

Carlyle was a prophet^ Mill an apostle. This formula 
will serve well enough to indicate the lines upon 
which we proceed. But, to pin the terms a little 
more closely to the paper, a qualification may in each 
case be added. The term prophet has so long been 
associated principally with such teaching as Carlyle's, 
that in his case we need not do more than employ an 
attribute suggestive of date. In the case of Mill, as 
apostleship is of all kinds, and the nature of its 
message consequently somewhat dependent on cir- 
cumstances, we shall require to use a term which 
will suggest the nature of Mill's doctrine. Our first 
concern will be, therefore, with The Prophet of 
the Latter Days ; our next, with The Apostle of 
Benthamism. 

But it will not be sufficient to give isolated esti- 
mates of the respective merits of the two men. We 
must treat them as forces bearing on the same body, 
or the significance of the conjunction will be lost. 



6 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuai^t Mill. 

So it will be necessary, after endeavouring to 
ascertain the nature of these two particular forces, 
to attempt some estimate of their influence. It 
requires little imagination to picture the condition 
of any given period of history as the result of an 
immense number of forces working upon certain 
materials. And what is more, it seems in accord 
with the general views of the greatest critics to 
consider this attitude as at least profitable and 
suggestive, if not absolutely the truth. For without 
touching upon long-vexed questions of necessity and 
free will, we may, I think, admit that the lives of men, 
and pre-eminently of great men, have a palpable 
effect upon external conditions. This was certainly 
the view both of Carlyle and Mill. To trace these 
effects is no easy task, and yet that would be poor 
criticism which gave up the duty without a trial. So 
we must endeavour to gauge the relative influences of 
Carlyle and Mill upon the world in which they lived. 

If we wish to cover this idea with a serviceable 
formula, we shall hardly do better than by borrowing 
a metaphor from that striking picture drawn by 
St. Paul of the clay in the hands of the potter. 
Perhaps the thought of the power there suggested 
is too absolute to be strictly followed, but, as a 
metaphor. The Potter s Clay may serve as the idea 
of a third aspect from which to consider our subject. 

Thus far we shall have considered Carlyle and 
Mill in what appear to be their essential positions 
as teachers. It has been said that every man is the 
embodiment of an idea, and that the only way to 



Introductory, 7 

understand him is to find that idea. But in addition 
to this key notion, the life of an active man furnishes 
generally other materials for consideration, — works, 
so to speak, off the main line of thought, but important 
enough to be worth some study. These we may call 
Parerga, and under this head consider those achieve- 
ments which, in the central study of our subject, 
were for the sake of clearness omitted. 

Finally, to make some attempt at completeness, it 
will not be amiss to glance carefully over the ground 
again, and see if we cannot gather up such minor 
fragments as were unavoidably left over at the first 
reaping. Lesser qualities of character and style, 
small details of circumstance, though not in them- 
selves sufficient to warrant incorporation into the 
main idea, yet help, as Gleanings, to swell the final 
harvest. Thus we have the rough sketch of an 
essay on Carlyle and Mill. 



"CHAPTER II. 

THE PROPHET OF THE LATTER DAYS. 

THE nineteenth century was born amid the roar 
of battle. Napoleon, barely resting after 
the first marvellous display which proved to an 
astonished Europe that a new Titan had arisen, 
was preparing that mighty march over the wrecks 
of kingdoms, which led at last to the rock of 
St. Helena. 

But Napoleon himself was only the shadow of 
a mightier force which, more secret in its workings, 
but still more fatal, had prepared the way before 
him. Like a destroying angel Voltaire had passed 
over the land ; and creeds, institutions, and reputa- 
tions, already hollow and ready to die, had withered 
at his touch. So universal was the wreck that all 
seemed lost, and the world of thought and behef 
almost a blank sheet. It scarcely needed the 
Diderots and the D'Alemberts to clear away the 
fragments. What Voltaire had done for the rest 
of Europe, that Hume had done for England, and 
though appearances were steadier there, it needs but 
little study of the period to see that England too. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 9 

in the first years of the century, was hanging over 
the abyss. 

But man will not be content long with mere 
denial. Of all the attempts at construction which 
have from time to time been conceived, perhaps that 
of Rousseau is the wildest. Yet it was an attempt 
at something positive. Man had '' rights," and it 
was his business to assert them. Following upon 
the doctrines of Rousseau came the reactionism of 
Chateaubriand and the attractive but unpractical 
attempts of the St. Simonians, and then the ambitious 
essay of Comte to found a new doctrine of ethics 
upcn the results of scientific knowledge. On the 
whole, however, the prospects from France were 
not hopeful. She had destroyed the old temples, 
but she could not build anew. 

More promising was the outlook in Germany. 
There a brilliant outburst of genius, heralded by 
Lessing, had succeeded to the unhappy productions 
of the Stiirm-iind-Drang Zeit^ or, in Carlyle's own 
homely phrase, the ^' bowl-and-dagger department."^ 
Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Novalis, were digging 
deep below the conventions of denial and assertion 
which a shallower age had been content to accept as 
truths, and were finding that a noble life was still 
to be lived, that reverence and faith, under new 
forms indeed, were still possible. The world was 
invited to believe that a man who saw in all its 
depth and breadth the despair which was brooding 
like a nightmare over the mind of Europe, could yet 

^ State of German IJterature, p. 132. 



ro Thomas Carlyle and Jo /m Stuaj^t Mill. 

calmly face the problem and assert that deliverance 
was possible ; that he who could produce Werter 
and Faust was yet capable of Wilhehn Meister. 
Kant and Fichte, too, on the scientific side, had 
boldly rejected the scepticism ^ of Voltaire and 
Hume, and accepted intuition as a surer guide than 
logic towards the solution of the great problems of 
existence. 

In England also there were strivings after better 
things. The vehement orthodoxy of Johnson, and 
the sentimental piety of Cowper, were no longer 
possible for the generation which had studied Hume 
and the Philosophes. Much had to be cleared away 
before the ground would be ready for the builder. 
But in the passionate discontent of Byron and 
Shelley a kindly criticism will see the hope of a 
brighter day. At least it was something that they 
refused to be content with obvious untruth. Death, 
we know, cut short the promise shadowed forth by 
their splendid powers, and left the work to other 
hands. Coleridge too, after a brief burst of splendour, 
sank into a chaos relieved only by stray flashes 
of genius. But Wordsworth's light was burning 
brightly in his mountain home : he at least had found 
peace, and shown the world by example that a life 
of piety, simple and poor as it was, could still be 
worthy of a man. Wordsworth's value is one of 

2 It is scarcely necessary to say that I do not use the 
word " scepticism " in a theological sense. I am well aware 
that the Protestant stories of Voltaire's atheism have been 
adopted from the Jesuits: Deo erexit Voltai?'e. Yet I look 
upon his work on the whole as destructive. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 1 1 

the most difficult of all estimates in English literature. 
At first neglected, then almost worshipped, then 
allowed to sink again into oblivion, he is perhaps 
only now finding his true place. But it is surely 
not too much to say that Wordsworth may be 
reckoned as one of the most hopeful factors in the 
spiritual condition of the first quarter of the century. 
One other influence must be noticed, before we 
come to that which was undoubtedly the most 
striking feature of the time. That the Oxford move- 
ment, v^ith all its extravagance and false sentiment, 
had a deep meaning, few thoughtful men will deny. 
The national church had long slumbered in con- 
tented lethargy, but the action of the Reform 
Parliament upon the subject of the Irish temporalities 
served as a warning which did not fall unheeded. 
Earnestness is the best feature of the teaching which 
Newman, and Pusey, and Keble strove to enforce. 
Religion was to be no longer a thing of social 
convenience and state policy, of magistracies and 
benefices, but a genuine spiritual power. Unfortu- 
nately, this earnestness looked for inspiration to 
the past rather than the present. St. Francis and 
Savonarola were its models, and St. Francis and 
Savonarola, exquisite characters as they are, were 
no guides for the days of 1 830. So, after a 
brilliant opening, the movement waned. Its greatest 
champion found for his soul a haven which for 
the majority of men can only be termed, as it has 
in fact often been termed, impossible. The feeling 
passed from religion to art, and we find it again, 



12 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

with its best feature still prominent, in the pre- 
Raphaelite school of Rossetti and his followers, and, 
rash as it may sound to say so, probably in the 
tones of such poems as Dolores and The Garden 
of Proserpine^ with which Mr. Swinburne has as- 
tonished and fascinated the world. A stone is thrown 
into the' lake, and it is hard to tell where the ripples 
end, yet one cannot help looking upon the Oxford 
movement as a dying force, too alien to English genius 
to be of the first importance here. Its influence is still 
great in details,— you can hardly enter a village 
church without being reminded of it, — but it is an 
influence which seems to work principally on those 
who are out of the main current of thought. 

I have little hesitation in assuming that the real 
teacher of the century's youth was, not Newman, 
but Bentham. A strange, patriarchal figure is this 
which rises before us as we turn our eyes back upon 
the years. A cynical enthusiast, better than his 
creed, yet consistent to the last in the practice of his 
philosophy, careless of his own fame, generous, even 
prodigal of his labour, a powerfully acute thinker on 
great subjects, yet almost childishl}'- credulous on 
minor points, his ghost still haunts the memory of 
Queen's Square days with pathetic persistence. Many 
of those who are consistent Benthamites know 
nothing of his writings ; some, perhaps, never heard 
his name. It is through his interpreters that he 
is known. And yet his teaching was marvellously 
simple. The only real things in life, says Bentham, 
are the sensations known as pleasures and pains* 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 13 

No one doubts what is a pleasure and what is a 
pain, though the varieties of each differ infinitely. 
The duty of the good man is to seek to minimise the 
quantity of pain in the world, and to increase to 
its full possibility the quantity of pleasure. Thus 
the end of ethics is the Greatest Happiness of the 
Greatest Number, for happiness means the presence 
of pleasure and the absence of pain. Devotion to 
a more exalted ideal is mere asceticism, intuition 
is only another name for prejudice. The duty of 
philosophers is, by a study of phenomena, the causes 
of pleasures and pains, to decide by what arrange- 
ments the desired end may be obtained. The duty 
of the unlearned is to observe the rules thus dis- 
covered by the wise. It is true that man does 
always what pleases him, i.e., his acts are the result 
of his volitions, but by education he may be taught 
what course of conduct will, by increasing the 
pleasures of others, really in the end give him 
most happiness. 

Such, popularly described, is the famous doctrine 
of Hedonism, which, with various modifications, has 
played so great a part in the development of the 
century. Its success was prompt and wide-reaching. 
On a first reading, the earlier chapters of the famous 
Traites de Legislation seem irresistible ; it is only 
after careful thought that the mind sees possible 
alternatives. 

Seldom has a single seed of thought yielded such 
a prolific harvest. To it can be traced the growth 
of that great scientific movement which is the striking 



14 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

feature of the century. The movement has many 
branches, but leaves and fruit ahke betray a common 
origin. Phenomena, forms, are the subjects of all 
the scientific schools ; their teaching is improvements 
in these. 

First and foremost come the many divisions of 
the ph3^sical school, boasting the names of Brewster, 
f^arada}^, Herschel, Darwin, and, later, of Tyndall 
and Huxle}^, whose teaching, at first purely logical, 
has long assumed, as it was bound to do, an ethical 
cast. But on the mental side the activity was no 
less keen. In politics. Mackintosh, Grote, Jeffrey, Sir 
George Lewis, Brougham, and Macaulay developed a 
science of the forms of government which succeeded 
to the popular harangues of O'Connell and Sir 
Francis Burdett. The phenomena of mind were 
studied by Brown, James Mill, Bain, and Martineau, 
and a new impetus given to the science of psychology, 
suggested long ago by Hartley. The economists, 
McCulloch, Ricardo, and Nassau Senior, laboured 
upcn the phenomena of wealth, and built on the 
foundation of Adam Smith a philosophy which was 
destined to strange fortunes. Finally, in the province 
of law, really the nidus of all this activity, but 
strangely overlooked amid the general fervour, 
Austin, neglected, and impeded by ill-health, was 
slowly working at that hard-grained task, which will 
long remain as a monument of his undaunted 
perseverance. 

Side by side with these, infected with their spirit, 
but not working with their single eye, was a band 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 15 

of men whose real duty lay elsewhere, but who 
unhappily conceived themselves bound to allay a 
conflict which in truth never existed, but which the 
world seemed determined to imagine, the so-called 
conflict between religion and science. Among all 
the solutions of the problem which were suggested 
by the Maurices, Kingsleys, Colensos, and Stanleys, 
the 'obvious explanation seems never to have pre- 
sented itself. And so we have the unhappy spectacle 
of a number of gifted and noble natures striving to 
reconcile irreconcileables, spending their lives in 
fighting for the forms instead of teaching the spirit 
of their beliefs. A little clearer insight into the 
nature of religion and science would have saved them 
a world of pain. Had a single philosopher of note 
announced that truth, honesty, simplicity, reverence, 
purity, were obsolete virtues, then indeed the 
champions of religion might have sounded the war- 
note. But no such gospel, in word at least, was 
preached, and they v^ho should have been on the 
watch to detect and ward off the real dangers which 
lay under this intense devotion to science, were 
themselves occupied in pseudo-scientific investiga- 
tions, which were to lead to conclusions to which 
they had already made up their minds. 

In addition to these intellectual influences, the 
extraordinary increase of material wealth which 
followed upon the inventions of Watt, Hargreaves, 
Ark Wright, and the Stephensons gave a character 
of its own to the time. Wealth was passing from 
the hands of the landowners to those of the manu- 



■^ 



1 6 Thomas Carlyle and John Stua7^t Mill. 

facturers, and the excitement aroused by the agitation 
for the Reform Bill had exalted the influence of 
the House of Commons to its highest pitch, at the 
same time that Reform itself had lodged the power 
of the House in the hands of the middle classes. 
The new rulers of the nation were men whose 
claims to distinction often lay principally in the 
amount of their wealth, sometimes too unscrupu- 
lously won by methods not the most creditable. 
The change in the conditions of labour, brought 
about by the introduction of machinery, had dis- 
organized the working-classes, and left them at 
the mercy of their employers. The old craft-guilds, 
with their rules to secure fair treatment of the 
labourer and good quality for his work, had fallen 
into decay, and no substitute had as yet been 
found. The state of affairs amongst the artizan- 
classes may be gathered from such books as 
Bamford's Life of a Radical — a picture of the 
most hopeful material going to ruin for want of 
guidance. 

The violent agitations in the labour-market, pro- 
duced by the sudden cessation of a long war and 
an unusual uncertainty of harvests, spread misery 
and discontent. The workmen saw their masters 
amassing huge fortunes and spending them in luxur}^, 
while their own condition was infinitely less desirable 
than it had been in the old days of cottage industry 
and long apprenticeships. And they were fed 
with political doctrines, which they applied, doubt- 
less, in a sense other than that understood by their 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 17 

teachers, and stored up as formidable weapons for 
the struggle which many amongst them believed 
to be imminent. A pessimist observer, calmly 
surveying the national aspect in the year of grace 
1830, might have summed up the situation thus: 
an idle aristocracy ; a plutocracy callously absorbed 
in the pursuit of wealth ; a proletariat smouldering 
in discontent. 

Meanwhile, like a lonely watchman of the night, 
sat a strange figure looking down from a Scottish 
wilderness upon all this world. What thoughts 
arose in the mind of Carlyle as he paced in solitude 
those rugged hills, we can only guess from the 
glimpses which he himself has given us. Here is 
a passage which must have been then trembling on 
his pen, and which seems to describe his attitude 
towards the world. It is put into the mouth of his 
creation, Professor Teufelsdrockh : — 

^^ Ach, mei?i Lieber ! ... it is a true sublimity to dwell 
here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through 
smoke and fiery exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient 
reign of Night — what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his 
Hunting-Dogs over the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire ? 
That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to 
rest, and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and 
there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed- 
in, and lighted to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and 
Misery, to prowl and moan like night-birds, are abroad : that 
hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is 
heard in Heaven ! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapours, 
and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting- 
vat lies simmering and hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful are 
there ; men are dying there, men are being born ; men are 
praying, — on the other side of a brick partition, men are curs- 
ing ; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud 
Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within 



1 8 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

damask curtains ; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or 
shivers hunger-stricken in its lair of straw ; in obscure cellars, 
Rouge et Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard, 
hungry vi lains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and 
playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are men. 
The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready ; and 
she, full of hope and fear, glides down to fly with him over the 
borders : the Thief, still more silently, sets to his picklocks and 
crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their 
boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, 
are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts ; but in 
the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and 
faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which 
is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. 
Six men are to be hanged on the morrow ; comes no hammer- 
ing from the Rabenstein ? — their gallows must even now be 
o" building. Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged 
animals without feathers lie around us, in horizontal positions ; 
their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. 
Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens 
of shame ; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over 
her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears 
moisten. — All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing: 
but a little carpentry and masonry between them ; — crammed 
in, like salted fish in their barrel ; — or weltering, shall I say, 
like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to 
get its head above the others : such work goes on under that 
cloud counterpane ! — But I, 77iei7i Werther, sit above it all ; I 
am alone with th^ Stars.'^ 

This is a picture by a master's hand. Design 
and execution are aHke great. There is immense 
power of imagination, a wide knowledge of life, 
deep sympathy, richness and yet harmony of detail, 
splendour of light, and gloom of shade. It is worth 
while to look somewhat closer at the artist. 

Thomas Carlyle was born in the year 1795, in the 
little border township of Ecclefechan in Dumfries- 
shire. Life had revealed itself to him from the first 
^ Sartor Resartiis, p. 14. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 19 

as a battle ; not, indeed, a hopeless struggle, but 
a condition which allowed no scope for idleness. 
His parents were of a too rare type of peasant 
race, — ^an earnest, God-fearing, thrifty, energetic 
pair. The father whom Carlyle has so lovingly 
sketched in his "Reminiscences," was, even after 
all allowance for filial affection, no ordinary man. 
St^rn perhaps to the outward eye, but for the rest 
all that a man with his chances could well be. " He 
was very kind, and I loved him," * is the touching 
confession which the son makes at the brink of 
the father's grave. We shall see something of 
the meaning of this word kind^ so lightly used, 
yet in its origin so full of meaning, as we trace 
Carlyle's history. 

But if his love was for his father, Carlyle's 
affection played round his mother. His grief at 
her death was too deep for formal expression ; 
but enough records remain to preserve to us a 
story of almost idyllic tenderness. To her the 
first news of every success was sent ; with her 
Carlyle unbosomed himself of his troubles. His 
first earnings were devoted to her comfort ; on her 
he leant in his hours of deepest despair. His fear 
to wound her feelings often made him speak in 
parables to her ; but love is marvellously quick 
to see through an allegory. 

Well did his parents deserve the respect and 
love he bore them. His father was poor, and 
some sage of authorit}^ had tempted him with the 

* Reminiscences^ vol. i., p. 45. 



20 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart MilL 

cowardly suggestion that a boy, if educated, would 
grow up to despise his family.^ This was a bitter 
thought for a stern man, conscious of his own 
worth, and he could not but know that it had 
a meaning. Yet with a " noble faith " ^ he put 
it aside, and did what he believed to be right, 
leaving the consequences. So Carlyle was sent 
to Annan school, and, when the time came, to 
Edinburgh University, that he might occupy the 
highest position within his parents' range of vision, 
the post of a minister of the Scottish Kirk. 

At Edinburgh Carlyle was taught mathematics, 
and learnt, without teaching, much that his pre- 
ceptors guessed little of, from books and men. 
How he managed in a few years, as a poor 
student or pedagogue, to amass that vast store 
of mental wealth which shines so conspicuously 
even through his earliest writings, can be guessed 
only by those to whom the ways of genius are 
familiar. The critics of Ampere's day wondered 
whence the bourgeois author drew his descriptions 
of high life. The element of imagination does not 
seem to have entered into their calculations. 

Before long it became clear that Carlyle would not 
occupy the position for which his parents had destined 
him, or indeed any other conventional niche. There 
was a fatal feature in his character, which shut him 
out from the broad path. He was troubled with a 
conscience. 

^ Reminiscences, vol. i., p. 19. 
6 Ibid. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. . 2 1 

Perhaps this is the keynote to the whole of Carlyle'^s 
history ; it may be well, therefore, to sound it clearly. 
Society is composed, for the most part, of men who 
assent with their lips to one set of propositions, and 
by their lives assert an inconsistent creed. Most 
men will admit that it is wrong to tell a lie ; but it is 
agreed that lies of a certain kind are admissible in 
practice. Few men will openly allege that money- 
making is the true end of existence, but very many 
will devote their whole lives to the making of money. 
And so it comes about that the man of the world has 
a double system of ethics — one side for Sunday wear, 
the other for weekdays. Compromise is the virtue 
which the world delights to honour. 

Carlyle was so constituted that such a position was 
an impossibility for him. It was hardl}^ a question 
of rejecting a falsehood — he could not have lived a 
day with it. A sentence from his journal puts the 
matter in a nutshell. . '' 'All true, Mr. Carlyle, But' : 
I say, 'All true, Mr. Carlyle, And.'" ^ The first 
part of the quotation is the suggestion of the man 
of the world ; the latter, Carlyle's answer — '' Get 
thee behind me, Satan," This attitude he reso- 
lutely maintained during his whole life, — at what 
cost, let each man judge for himself who has tried 
the like. 

At the very outset it cut him off from the Scottish 

Church. It was impossible for him to believe 

literally in the Westminster Confession, and he 

could not join a calling which demanded such a 

"^ First Forty, vol. ii., p. 206. 



2 2 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

belief. So he turned, with no great eagerness, to 
schoolmastering. 

But here, too, there were difficulties. The powers 
of Kirkcaldy town hardly recognized the true posi- 
tion of affairs. From their point of view, Carlyle 
was their servant, bound to execute their orders. 
Carlyle did not adopt this view, and threw up the 
affair in disgust. Judged by his own lofty standard, 
he stands condemned for this. He was not required 
to make any false profession, by word or act. His 
conscientious labours could hardly have failed to 
do good, and the work lay to his hand. Had the 
" Infinite Nature of Duty " been as clear to him then 
as it afterwards became, he would not have deserted 
his post. But he was conscious of great powers, 
and the thought of wasting them in a country town 
proved too much for him. 

He was now possessed of that perfect independ- 
ence which consists in having no particular place 
in the world. His history for the next few years 
is not a cheerful, if a somewhat common story. 
Attempts at this and that, aimless wanderings to 
and fro, stormy spiritual conflict, — the experience 
is perhaps necessary, but it is unpleasant whilst it 
lasts. 

The conduct of his parents during these years 
was such as to bind Carlyle's heart to them for ever. 
It was no common disappointment that their son had 
turned aw^ay from what seemed to them the highest 
and most sacred of callings. The}^ could hardly 
conceal that they looked upon the flight from Kirk- 



The Prophet of tJie Latter Days. 23 

caldy as a mistake. To the resolute, ever-busy 
farmer, the sight of a man in the prime of Hfe, 
loitering about in idleness, or with only the pretence 
of reading, must have been terribly exasperating. 
And James Carlyle was no meek saint. 

Yet there was not a word of reproach, no slightest 
reference to the toil spent in providing means which 
seemed now destined to be thrown away, no urgings 
towards a " career of fame and wealth," such as 
some fathers are not ashamed to hold out before 
their sons. Though they could have no sympathy 
with his doubts, Carlyle's parents saw that they 
could not judge of his difficulties, and with supreme 
wisdom they left him to fight his own battle, merely 
assuring him, by expressive acts of kindness, of 
their earnest wishes for his welfare. It is no exag- 
geration to say that, had they acted otherwise, 
their son might have ended his days in a madhouse. 

At last, after a dreary night, the morning began 
to dawn. In the course of his omnivorous reading, 
Carlyle had been attracted by the promising subject 
of German Literature. With indomitable energy he 
had taught himself German, helped only by grammar 
and dictionary. Learning won this way, by the 
sweat of the brow, is not lightly forgotten, and 
Carlyle to the end of his days was a master of the 
German tongue. His venture proved successful ; 
he was one, as he himself tells us,^ whom Goethe 
had helped to lead out of spiritual obstruction, "into 
peace and light." Moreover, the study brought him 
^ Goethe^ " Miscellanies," vol. i., p. 213. 



24 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

a mission. He had before done craft-work for Sir 
David Brewster on the Encyclopcsdia, and had 
translated Legendre. Now he was to begin a 
labour of love, the introduction of German literature 
to the world of English thought. The first step was 
a translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, a task 
performed in such a way as to win the approval 
of the artist himself. Then followed the beautiful 
Life of Schiller, which Goethe valued so highly 
that he had it translated into German under his 
own eye. Thus encouraged, Carlyle produced in the 
periodicals of the day a series of essays, principally 
on German Literature, which now stand as the first 
four volumes of Miscellanies, in the complete 
editions of his works. The merits of these essays 
we shall have to consider further on ; at present 
we are concerned with the outward circumstances 
of the writer. 

In the year 1826 Carlyle had married. It was a 
step which meant more for one of his nature even 
than for other men, and, unpleasant as the subject 
has become, we cannot entirely pass over it. 

Mrs. Carlyle was a singularly gifted woman, with 
a sense of duty hardly less strong than her hus- 
band's. At the time of their marriage she was 
considerably above him in social position, though 
her own generosity had left her no superiority in 
worldly wealth. Had she remained single, or 
married an ordinary man, she would probably have 
risen into note as a woman of talent. Her critical 
abilities were really great, her power of fascination 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 25 

conspicuous. By the side of her husband's genius 
she was, of course, dwarfed ; she was Mrs. Carlyle, 
and nothing more. 

The clouds of reproach which have burst over the 
husband of this woman shape themselves into two 
distinct accusations. He is said to have married her 
without being in love with her, and to have treated 
her -with carelessness, if not with actual cruelty. 

As to the first charge, it is of course no answer to 
say that thousands of men have done the like with- 
out being blamed for it. A man who poses as a 
teacher of the multitude cannot escape by conform- 
ing to the standard of the multitude. And certainly 
Carlyle would have rejected such a defence with 
scorn. 

What, then, is the evidence ? Apparently, one 
fragment written in late life by Mrs. Carlyle in 
a private note-book, from which it appears that 
Carlyle, in criticising one of Thackeray's novels, 
had spoken lightly of ^^ the thing called lovey^ Mrs. 
Carlyle was a sorely-tried woman, and we can 
forgive her for taking in far too literal a sense 
an isolated expression of opinion. But that a bio- 
grapher should bring a serious charge against the 
man he professes to reverence, without showing 
better warrant than this, is altogether too disgrace- 
ful. Mr. Froude is really to blame for the 
indecent outburst of joy that took place on the 
publication of the biography. The people who had 
been stung by the arrows of Carlyle's wrath, but 
'^ First Forty ^ vol i., p. 285. 



2 6 Thomas Caidyle and John Stuart Mill. 

who had not had the grace to be thankful for the 
wounds, saw their chance of revenge. This man, 
who had preached such a high gospel in such an 
uncomfortably forcible way — he was after all no 
better than other people. How delightful ! There 
may have been, among the shrewdest, a few who 
saw that it was not Carlyle, but his biographer, 
that was to blame. In truth Mr. Froude, by his way 
of treating the subject, has managed to leave an 
impression which is entirely unwarranted by the 
evidence. He has unrivalled opportunities of 
knowing the real state of the case, yet he never 
produces any substantial ground for his criticisms. 
He is continually maundering on through moral 
platitudes about the marriages of men of genius, 
coming back again and again to the subject, like 
a wasp to a rotten apple, till at last the reader is 
brought to believe that Carlyle married his wife for 
the same reasons that actuated him in buying a 
horse. And all this from a hasty note of a vaguely 
reported conversation. 

On the other side there is abundant evidence. 
Carlyle's letters to his wife, extending over long 
years, are some of the tenderest and most affection- 
ate epistles in the English language. Nothing but 
consummate hypocrisy could have fabricated such 
letters. Carlyle could not be a day absent from his 
wife without writing her every detail of his occupa- 
tions. On each birthday he offered her a little gift, 
with the most humble entreaties for its acceptance. 
The memoir which he wrote in his latest years is 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 2 J 

filled with the most exquisite details, such as love 
alone could have noticed. It is true that he would 
not sacrifice his conscience to her wishes, but what 
would such a woman as Mrs. Carlyle have thought 
of the man who could have stooped to that ? 
Carlyle might with justice adopt the noble tone of 
the old Cavalier poet : — 

I could not love thee, Dear, so much, 
Loved I not Honour more. 

With the second charge the case is much the 
same. Mr. Froude treats us to whole pages of 
disquisition, but to hardly a word of proof. We 
may admit, at once, that, whatever her faults, 
nothing would have justified Carlyle in treating with 
neglect or unkindness the woman who had devoted 
her life to his welfare. That Mrs. Carlyle was 
offended — unreasonably many will think — by the 
attention her husband paid to the wishes of Lady 
Harriet Baring, is quite clear. In her anger she 
meditated the extreme step of a separation. Whether 
she was justified is quite another matter. The offence 
consisted in the visits of Carlyle to the house of a 
woman who had shown him real kindness, and who 
took a delight in his society. Mrs. Carlyle was always 
welcome in her husband's company, and could hardly 
blame him for an absence which her own refusal to 
join him had caused. For the rest, the quarrels seem 
to exist mainly in Mr. Froude's imagination. Mrs. 
Carlyle was often unhappy, but there might be many 
reasons for that. Carlyle was not what is generally 
termed a cheerful man. Mrs. Carlyle found life 



2 8 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtaj't Mill. 

hard, but to her husband it was not a bed of roses. 
Yet there is one piece of criticism on this sad subject 
which ought not to be overlooked. It comes from 
one who was friendly enough to both parties to 
rejoice in their happiness, but who was far too 
keen-sighted to be deceived by appearances. In the 
diary which Emerson kept during his second visit to 
England, under date October 1847, ^^ wrote these 
words: — " C. and his wife live on beautiful terms. 
Their ways are very engaging, and, in her bookcase, 
all his books are inscribed to her, as they came from 
year to year, each with some significant line." ^" 

This was written just twelve months after the 
Baring episode, and with the charitable hope which 
it suggests we might leave the subject, were it not 
that justice demands a word on Carlyle's side of 
the case. 

Whether or not Carlyle was in love with his wife, 
it stands on her own confession that she was not in 
love with him. She had been passionately attached 
to Edward Irving before she made her husband's 
acquaintance, and Irving's foolishness alone pre- 
vented a marriage. With her usual fatal accuracy 
she has pronounced her own condemnation : ^' I 
married for ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that 
my wildest hopes ever imagined of him — and I am 
miserable." ^^ 

It is a relief to turn from this sad, though probably 
exaggerated topic, to one charming incident, the last 

''^ Correspo7ide7ice of Carlyle and Emerson, vol. ii., p. 148. 
^1 First Forty, vol. i., p. 291. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 29 

we shall notice in Carlyle's early life. In the year 
1833 Emerson, then young and unknown, took up 
his pilgrim's staff and journeyed to the wilderness 
of Craigenputtock, where Carlyle was living in 
solitary state. He had heard the prophet's voice over 
three thousand miles of sea, and had recognized the 
ring of genius. To America undoubtedly belongs, 
with -Germany, the honour of discovering Carlyle 
before his own countrymen were aware of him. 
" A prophet is not without honour, save in his 
own country." 

It is a striking incident, too, this visit of Emerson's, 
made all the more picturesque by his own simple 
way of telling it. He came unannounced, walked 
with Carlyle over the heather, and as they went 
they talked of all things in heaven and earth. Who 
does not know the keen joy of unrestrained talk 
with a brother soul ? — as different from '' conversa- 
tion" as Niagara from a scent-squirt! Emerson 
stayed but a few hours. Like a flash of light 
he came and went, and we can fancy how Carlyle 
would muse over his visit, comparing it with the 
life of man — ^' out of eternity, into eternity." But 
the deed was touching and grateful, and the lonely 
prophet could count another human soul which his 
words had reached. 

For the rest, his lot had hardly been genial. He 
was now (1834) nearly forty years old, and still a 
vagabond in the earth. The same inflexible resolu- 
tion to be altogether true had shut him out from 
one employment after another. It is remarkable 



30 Tho7nas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

that, even in this period of his obscurity, no one 
who came into contact with him ever questioned his 
genius. The httle work of his that was accepted 
was paid for at a higher rate than that of any other 
craftsman ; yet, even with this tribute to his merits, 
the world could find no place for him. He would 
not say or do the smallest thing which he did not 
believe to be true, and so men found him impractic- 
able, for they believed in truth only theoreticall3^ 
He was passed over for this and that humble em- 
ployment, in favour of this and that conventional 
nonentit}^ His overflowing generosity, too, had 
sorely tried his resources. With scarcely sufficient 
money for his bare wants, he was supporting his 
brother in a costly course of education. He might 
have had wealth and place, if only he would have 
fallen down and worshipped. After forty days and 
nights of fasting, he was tempted of the devil — 
in the shape of Jeffrey. Jeffrey really wished him 
well, according to his light. He recognized Carlyle's 
transcendent abilities. If he would only suppress 
those uncomfortable sayings of his which made every 
one shudder, if he would but be somethings Whig, 
Political Economist, even Radical, something with a 
ticket on it, he might become even as Macaulay, with 
his prospective peerage and his present ten thousand 
a-year. Carlyle must have been more than human 
if these temptations had been without attractions 
for him. He saw clearly the necessity for earning a 
living, he was no ascetic. He had his wife to care 
for, his family to help. He knew he could do easily 



The P^^ophet of the Latte^^ Days. 3 1 

the work for which many men were paid so highly. 
But he had nailed his colours to the mast. Any- 
thing that was honest and thorough, without sham 
or futility about it, that he would gladly do, however 
humble the task. But be anything or do anything 
which his inmost conviction told him was false or 
cowardly, that he would not. And so he was left for 
many days in the wilderness. 

II. 

We have now reached the fulness of the time at 
which the prophet is to descend from his watch- 
tower and go up and down in the world. It will be 
of the first importance to see if we can understand 
something of the spiritual equipment of the man who 
is henceforward to be such a striking figure. 

In this task, as always, we must be careful to 
begin at the right point. Carlyle complains ^^ of 
Archdeacon Hare that in his biography of his friend, 
he "takes up Sterling as a clergyman merely," that 
is to say, he gives us an entirely false idea of the 
man by insisting on only one aspect, and that not the 
most important aspect, of his character. Carlyle has 
suffered from a similar error. He has been treated 
as a speculative philosopher rather than as a moral 
force. The '' Jubilee " critic of the Daily News, in 
his summary of the literary characters of the half- 
century, was kind enough to say that '' Carlyle was 
a very considerable thinker up to a certain point." 
And the thousands of intelligent readers who resort 

^2 Life of Sterlings p. 3. 



32 Tho7iias Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

to the leading articles of the Daily News for mental 
pabulum will doubtless be confirmed in the impres- 
sion that Carlyle was a sort of English Emerson 
or Novalis. With the modest assertion of the Daily 
News critic, regarded as an isolated statement, I 
surely have no wish to quarrel. It is doubtless quite 
true that '' Carlyle was a very considerable thinker 
up to a certain point," and we need not enquire too 
particularly whether that point is to be fixed within 
his critic's range of mental vision or beyond it. 
What it is necessary to notice is, that to figure 
Carlyle as a speculative reasoner about the condi- 
tions of the universe is to fall completely wide of 
any approach to an understanding of his position. 

Still more misleading is it to look at Carlyle as 
a man of letters in the shallower sense of the term, 
that is, as a man whose chief possession is his writing 
faculty. His literary gifts were supremely splendid ; 
we shall have occasion to examine them later on. 
But he was not a literary man in the sense that De 
Quincey, Macaulay, Hazlitt, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, 
all of them his contemporaries, were literary men. 
For this class, if the truth must be told, he had no 
little contempt. Carlyle wrote books because after 
many trials he found that this was the one way in 
which he could deliver his message to the world, the 
only career allowed him b}^ the conditions of his time. 
For intellect, as he has himself impressed upon us, 
'' is not a tool, but a hand that can handle any tool." ^^ 
Had Carlyle lived in the fifteenth century he would 
^^ Diderot, " Miscellanies," vol. v., p. 45. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 2>Z 

have been a Savonarola; in the sixteenth, a Luther 
or a WilHam the Silent ; in the seventeenth, a 
Cromwell ; in the eighteenth, a Friedrich of Prussia. 

This is but to say again that in Carlyle's moral 
character we must look for the secret of his force. 

We have seen before that the groundwork of this 
character was its love of truth. Perhaps it is more 
exact to say that this quality had at first been 
developed principally on its negative side, as the 
hatred of falsehood. It had hitherto been seen 
chiefly in his refusal to make the smallest concession 
to social conventions. But it also had been secretly 
working in the indefatigable industry with which 
Carlyle had read all manner of attainable books. 
History, philosophy, science, poetry, even fiction, 
of Greece, Rome, England, France, Germany, Italy, 
Spain, had been stored up with amazing facility in 
the depths of his mind. Never was a man less of 
a pedant, yet no man ever shrank less from the 
most revolting drudgery in his search after the truth. 
The gigantic range of his knowledge must strike 
every reader of Carlyle's works, no less than the 
natural way in which his references seem to float 
off him, as mere excess of mental wealth. 

But another and more concentrated quality had 
grown up in Carlyle during that long sojourn in the 
wilderness. Amid so much that was uncertain and 
contradictory in philosophy and science, he came to 
rest with deUght on this one fact, that a man's duty 
from day to day is tolerably plain to him. If he 
confuse himself with speculations as to the origin 

3 



34 Thomas Carlyle and John Stitai't Mill. 

and sanction of duty, he ma}^ well happen to fall 
into uncertainty ; but the plain man, who simply 
looks for his dut}^, will ahva3^s find it. So the 
'' Infinite Nature of Duty " became to Carhde a 
fundamental fact, a thing to be held fast, obe3'ed, 
and venerated. This belief transfigured all work in 
his eyes ; the roughest toil, the humblest service, 
was beautiful in this light. The man he delighted 
to honour was the man who wasted no time in 
pointing to his work, or discussing it, or trying 
to find a way out of it, but simply did it, and 
then turned to ''doe the nexte thynge." "Such 
knowledge of the transcendental^ unmeasurable 
character of Duty we call the basis of all Gospels, 
the essence of all Religion : he who with his whole 
soul knows not this, as yet knows nothing, as yet is 
properly nothing." ^"^ 

This was no theoretic fancy of Carlyle's. His life 
was one long industry. Let a thing appear to be 
his plain duty, and he set about it, and finished it, 
regardless of difficulties. He had to write an article 
on Diderot, and he thought it a matter of course to 
read through his '' twenty-one octavos " as a pre- 
paration.^^' At the age of sixty- three it appeared to 
him that he ought to write a history of Friedrich of 
Prussia. With indefatigable energy he set to work, 
and, after thirteen j^ears of toil, produced a book 
which has filled every competent critic in Europe 
with admiring amazement. Join together this 

^•^ Johnson, " Miscellanies," vol. iv., p. 109, 
1^ First Forty, vol. ii., p. 277. 



^ 



The Prophet of the Latter Days, 35 

reverent passion for work with the other feature of 
intense hatred of falsehood, and we have in some 
measure accounted for the fact that Carlyle's labours 
are abundant in quantity and sterling in quality. 

But there was another feature of his character 
which perhaps still more marked him as one apart 
from the world of his day. With all his being he 
belfeved in God. Summing up the results of his 
vast readings in the Bible of History, he could pro- 
nounce, with an emphasis which sounded strange to 
the men of his time, " Verily He is a God that 
judgeth in the earth." Intuitionist as he confessedly 
was,^*^ he drew this belief from the deepest study of 
external events ; it was a conclusion from the most 
rigorous and indefatigable process of induction. 
"Might and right do differ frightfully from hour toB y^ 
hour ; but give them centuries to try it in, they are 
found to be identical." ^'^ And again : " With a nation, 
when the multitude of the chances covers, in a great 
measure, the uncertainty of chance, it may be said 
to hold always that general suffering is the fruit of 
general misbehaviour, general dishonesty." ^^ This 
belief he held and enforced with a passionate 
persistence which is almost unrivalled in modern 
times. His faith was not a Sunday suit of clothes, 
but an inward light, which brought him safely through 
the quicksands on which his contemporaries were 

^^ "A man's ultimate monition comes only from within." — 
Carlyle a7id Emerson^ vol. i., p. 217 ; and see pp. 352 
and 353. 

^^ Chartism, p. 158. 

^^ Count Cagliostro, " Miscellanies," vol. v., p. 85. 



36 Thomas Carlyle and Jo Jin Stuart Mill. 

wrecked. It is hardly necessary to say that Carlyle 
did not express his belief in a theological formula. 
Sterling had reproached him for not believing in 
a "personal God." With characteristic vehemence 
Carlyle had replied : '' Personal ! Impersonal ! One ! 
Three ! What meaning can any mortal (after all) 
attach to them in reference to such an object ? Wcr 
darf Ihn Nennen ? I dare not and do not." ^^ He 
saw that by quarrelling about formulas men lost 
their hold on the reality. He reserved himself for 
the reality, and his faith was as strong as that of 
Isaiah or Ezekiel. What God was, or how we 
knew Him, — whether as force, tendency, tradition, — 
he did not care to enquire, but his whole life was 
filled with His presence. 

This then is the core of Carlyle's moral character. 
He believed in truth, work, and a God of justice. 
And this is really the key-point of his position, the 
thing indispensable to know if we would understand 
Carlyle. But there are two of his intellectual 
qualities which we must also notice before proceeding 
with his career. 

The first of these we may call Insight or Imagina- 
tion. With Carlyle truth was a sensation rather 
than a conclusion. His eye pierced through the 
most formidable and repulsive rubbish heaps, and 
saw at once the jewel that lay beneath. This faculty 
is most strikingly shown in his judgment of character. 
It has been said that Carlyle's portraits live before 
us. They live to us because they lived to him. He 
^^ Last Forty, vol. i., p. 43, 



The Prophet of the Latter Days, 2)7 

found Cromwell, as generally figured by English 
writers, an absurd mass of inconsistencies ; a man 
without ability, who from a country farmer became 
ruler of England ; a hypocrite who was willing to 
shed his blood in the cause of religion, — a thing 
impossible in fact. Carlyle looked at the man, saw 
through the obscurities which prejudice had raised 
up, and boldly declared Cromwell to be a hero. It 
was a rash thing to do, but so irresistible was his 
demonstration that the judgment of the nation veered 
round in obedience to it. So it was with Friedrich 
Wilhelm of Prussia. Macaulay was the most popular 
and trusted historian of the day. The theory of 
causation was probably included among the articles 
of his creed. Yet this man pronounced Friedrich 
Wilhelm, the organizer of Prussia, the conqueror 
of Charles XII., the protector of the Heidelberg 
and the Salzburg Protestants, to be a mere savage 
pedant, occupied principally with committing violent 
assaults on the members of his family, and crimping 
tall grenadiers. In the teeth of this verdict Carlyle 
tears aside the rugged features of the outer Friedrich 
Wilhelm, goes right down into the midst of his 
troubles and difficulties, declares him to be a man of 
genius, and justifies his judgment by one of the most 
vivid and life-like of historical portraits. 

The second quality, closely connected with this 
gift of insight, is one for which it is very hard to find 
an expressive name, perhaps because the quality itself 
is so unhappily rare. - " Idealism " may possibly serve 
as a suggestion of the profound impression made 



2,S Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

on Carlyle by common events and things. ' It is the 

quality hinted at in Wordsworth's familiar lines : — 

A primrose on the river's brim 

A yellow primrose was to him, 

And it was nothing more. 

Take the extremely common phenomenon known 
as man. To the ordinary observer a human being 
is a '' forked radish with a curiously carved head," or 
at most an entity possessing certain limited qualities 
and capabilities. To the physiologist a man is a collec- 
tion of intricate tissues known as flesh, blood, bones, 
and the like. To the psychologist he is a com- 
plicated series of mental phenomena hanging on the 
thread of memory. Carlyle looked upon the matter 
in a different light. 

" * To the eye of vulgar Logic,'" says he (Teufelsdrockh), 
" * what is man ? An omnivorous biped that wears breeches. 
To the eye of Pure Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spirit, and 
divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, 
under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), 
contextured in the Loom of Heaven ; whereby he is revealed 
to his like, and dwells with them in Union and Division ; and 
sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry 
Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep hidden is he 
under that strange garment ; amid Sounds and Colours and 
Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over-shrouded : 
yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not 
thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of 
Eternities ? He feels ; power has been given him to know, 
to believe ; nay, does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial 
primeval brightness, even there, though but for moments, look 
through? Well said St. Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, 
" The true Shekinah is Man : " where else is the God's- 
Presence manifested, not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, 
as in our fellow-man ? ' " 20 

The significance of man, indeed, is a subject he is 

'^^ Sartor Resartus, p. 44. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 39 

never weary of dwelling on. Every human being 
is ''hung on a moment of Time between two 
Eternities ; " '' he waited a whole Eternity to be born, 
and now has a whole Eternity waiting to see what 
he will do when born." But Carlyle was not less 
profoundly impressed by the sights of Nature. As 
the only way in which this feature of his character 
can be explained is by illustration, we may venture 
one more quotation. It comes from the inimitable 
essay called The Diamond NecklacCy and was pro- 
bably provoked by the foolish talk, at one time 
fashionable, about the necessary disappearance of 
poetry and the Romantic from an enlightened and 
scientific world. It was bad enough for a second- 
rate critic like Hazlitt to predict such things, but 
when Keats, whose work was disproof positive of 
such a vaticination, gave the sanction of his name to 
the foreboding, it was time for some one to speak 
out. This is Carlyle's answer to the prophets of 
evil : — 

" In our own poor Nineteenth Century the writer of these 
lines has been fortunate enough to see not a few glimpses of 
Romance ; he imagines this Nineteenth is hardly a whit less 
romantic than that Ninth, or any other, since centuries began. 
Apart from Napoleon, and the Dantons, and Mirabeaus, whose 
fire-words of public speaking, and fire-whirlwinds of cannon 
and .musketry, which for a season darkened the air, are 
perhaps at bottom but superficial phenomena, he has witnessed, 
in remotest places, much that could be called romantic, even 
miraculous. He has witnessed overhead the infinite Deep, 
with greater and lesser lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, 
hurled forth by the Hand of God: around him and under his 
feet, the wonderfulest Earth, with her winter snow-storms 
and her summer spice-airs ; and, unaccountablest of all, 
hijnself standing there. He stood in the lapse of Time ; he 



40 Thomas Carlyle and Jo /m Stuart Mill. 

saw Eternity behind him and before him. The all-encirding 
mysterious tide of Force, thousandfold (for from force of 
Thought to force of Gravitation what an interval !) billowed 
shoreless on ; bore him too along with it, — he too was part of 
it. From its bosom rose and vanished, in perpetual change, 
the lordliest Real Phantasmagory, which men term Behtg ; 
and ever anew rose and vanished ; and ever that lordliest 
many-coloured scene was full, another yet the same. Oak- 
trees fell, young acorns sprang. Men too, new sent from the 
Unknovvn, he met, of tiniest size, who waxed into stature, into 
strength of sinew, passionate fire and light : in other men 
the light was growing dim, the sinews all feeble ; they sank, 
motionless, into ashes, into invisibility ; returned back to the 
Unknown, beckoning him their mute farewell. He wanders still 
by the parting spot ; cannot hear them ; they are far, how far! — 
" It was a sight for angels, and archangels ; for, indeed, 
God Himself had made it wholly. One many-glancing 
asbestos-thread in the web of Universal History, spirit-woven, 
it rustled there, as with the howl of mighty winds, through 
that ' wild-roaring Loom of Time.' Generation after genera- 
tion, hundreds of them or thousands of them, from the 
unknown Beginning, so loud, so storm ful-busy, rushed torrent- 
wise, thundering down, down ; and fell all silent, nothing but 
some feeble reecho, which grew ever feebler, struggling up; 
and oblivion swallowed them all. Thousands more, to the 
unknown Ending, will follow : and thou here, of this present 
one, hangest as a drop, still sungilt, on the giddy edge, one 
moment, while the Darkness has not yet ingulfed thee. O 
Brother ! is that what thou callest prosaic ; of small 
interest ? " ^i 

The force of this imagination is so vivid that we 
might almost feel tempted to say of Carlyle as the 
Veronese of Dante, Eccovi V iioni cK e stato aU 
Inferno. It is so true as to be raised entirely above 
the level of fancy. The materials made use of are 
the simplest and most widely acknowledged facts. 
The passage is no more fiction than are the revela- 
tions of the microscope. 

2^ The Dia^nond Necklace, "Miscellanies," vol. v., p. 134. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 41 

Such was the gospel Carlyle was about to announce 
to the world. What was his title to stand forward 
as a teacher of men ? 

The essays he had already written were probably 
more or less known. Most of them were on literary 
subjects, and though they displayed great knowledge 
and considerable skill, were not in themselves 
sufficient to warrant the inference of great originality. 
Still there were passages here and there which ought 
to have put. the disciples of Bentham on their guard. 
*' Mr. Taylor is simply what they call a Philtster;. 
every fibre of him is Philistine. With us such men 
usually take to Politics, and become Code-makers and 
Utilitarians."^^ And the writer looks forward to the 
time when " in our inward world there will again be 
a sunny Firmament and verdant Earth, as well as 
a Pantry and culinary Fire." ^^ 

Still more in two remarkable essays upon the 
condition of society, entitled Signs of the Times 
and Characteristics y had Carlyle flashed out strange 
rays. In the first of these he had ventured to 
christen the times the '' Mechanical Age," to taunt 
the Economists with the flagrant contradiction of 
their theories by patent facts, to speak of ''the A 
mighty interest taken in mere political arrangements,^* ^*/ ^^ 
and to sum up his indictment in the charge that " inf 
the management of external things we excel alli 

22 Historic Survey of German Poetjy, " Miscellanies," vol. 
iii., p. 241. 

-^ State of German Literature^ ibid., p. 216. 
24 Signs of the Times, ibid., vol. ii., p. 239. 



42 Thovias Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

other ages ; while in whatever respects the pure 
moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, 
we are perhaps inferior to most civilized ages." -'' 
This criticism must have sounded strange to the 
readers of the EdinburgJi Revienj, accustomed as they 
were to felicitations on an " Age of Progress/' as to 
which pleasing theory Carlyle aptly enough reminds 
them, that while it is probable that the happiness and 
greatness of mankind have on the whole progressed, 
it by no means follows that a particular nation at 
^ particular time is in a condition of advance. 

The Characteristics was still more outspoken. 
Carlyle here says boldly that the age, which is plum- 
ing itself upon its advance in wealth, philosophy, 
and enlightenment, is in an essentially unhealthy 
state, of which this very self-analysis and self- 
laudation is evidence. " The healthy know not of 
their health, but only the sick," — this is the text 
of the discourse. The diseases of society, '' physical 
and spiritual, " are pointed out in the plainest 
language. 

" Wealth has accumulated itself into masses ; and Poverty, 
also in accumulation enough, lies impassably separated from 
it ; opposed, uncommunicating, like forces in positive and 
negative poles. The gods of this lower world still sit aloft on 
glittering thrones, less happy than Epicurus" gods, but as 
indolent, as impotent ; while the boundless living chaos of 
Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific in its dark fury, under 
their feet. How much among us might be likened to a 
whited sepulchre ; outwardly all pomp and strength ; but 
inwardly full of horror, and despair, and dead-men's bones ! 
Iron highways, with their wains fire-winged, are uniting all 
ends of the firm Land ; quays and moles, with their innumer- 

2^ Signs of the Ti??ies, " Miscellanies," vol. ii., p. 245. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 4 



"> 



able stately fleets, tame the Ocean into our pliant bearer of 
burdens ; Labour's thousand arms, of sinew and of metal, all- 
conquering ever3'\vhere, from the tops of the mountains down 
to the depths of the mine and the caverns of the sea, ply 
unweariedly for the service of man ; yet man remains un- 
served. He has subdued this Planet, his inhabitation and his 
inheritance ; yet reaps no profit from the victory." -^ 

The aspect of the spiritual condition is no more 
satisfactory. In religion men are discoursing of the 
evidences instead of doing the works : '' The most 
enthusiastic Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, 
but keep describing how it should and might be 
preached. . . . Considered as a whole, the Christian 
Religion of late ages has been continually dissipat- 
ing itself into Metaphysics."-' Literature has become 
a thing of advertising, inspiration has given place to 
affectation, view-hunting thrives. The popularity of 
metaphysics is another sign of this morbid intro- 
spective condition. *' Metaphysics is the attempt of 
the mind to rise above the mind." -^ 

In this state of affairs, men go various wa3'S. 
Some accept a purely material view, deciding 
that '^ nothing is certain in the world except this 
fact of Pleasure being pleasant," — which fact they 
determine to make good use of. Others, '^ to whom 
the Universe is not a w^arehouse, or at best a fancy 
bazaar, but a mystic temple and hall of doom,"-^ 
are sorely perplexed. Some take up with ''worn 
out symbols of the Godhke ; " others " have dared to 

-^ Characteristics ^ "Miscellanies," vol. iv., p. i8. 
^^ Ibid., p. 20. 
-s Ibid., p. 24. 
^ Ibid., p. 2"] . 



44 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

say No, and cannot yet say Yea," the fate of these 
being hard enough. 

This picture is dark, but it is worth noting, by 
those who sum up Carlyle as a dyspeptic pessimist, 
that now, when the glow of youth was long over, 
when his own prospects were at their very lowest, 
he ends this prophecy, in which he has shown such 
a full appreciation of the evils of the time, with a 
note of high promise : — 

" A Faith in Religion has again become possible and 
inevitable for the scientific mind ; and the word Free-Thinkitr 
no longer means the Denier or Caviller, but the Believer, or the 
Ready to believe." ^'^ . . . " Here on Earth we are as Soldiers, 
fighting in a foreign land ; that understand not the plan of the 
campaign, and have no need to understand it ; seeing well what 
is at our hand to be done. Let us do it like soldiers ; with 
submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. 'Whatsoever 
thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.' Behind us, 
behind each one of us, He Six Thousand Years of -human 
effort, human conquest ; before us is the boundless Time, 
with its as yet uncreated and unconquered Continents and 
Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create ; 
and from the bosom of Eternity there shine for us celestial 
guiding stars." ^^ 

III. 

Here were evidences of originality and power, had 
the world chosen to see them. But there was one 
question which in any case the world had a right to 
ask, which any man has a right to ask of one who 
offers to act as his guide. What had been the fate 
of Carlyle's own search after light ? Sympathy is 
the only real key to human hearts, and the sufferer 

^^ Characteristics^ p. 36. 
31 Ibid., p. 38. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 45 

shrinks from assistance proffered by a hand which 
never felt the pain. Had Carlyle himself been 
through the furnace of affliction ? Had he tossed in 
the fever which he saw to be parching men's souls*? 
How had he found relief ? 

The answers to these questions are to be gathered 
from -the pages of Sartor Resartus, which had then 
just appeared in the numbers of Eraser. This 
won"tlerful work, the picture of a soul struggling 
towards the light, is the record of Carl3^1e's ex- 
perience in the land of darkness. By it his right 
to speak is fully vindicated, for, unlike Werter 
and Childe Harold, it does not leave us with intenser 
despair in the midst of our troubles, but takes 
us through and beyond them to the other side. This 
fact is well worthy of notice as evidence of Carlyle's 
character. It is easy to make out a strong case 
against life ; the difficulty lies in pointing to the 
remedy. It may possibly be a relief to the sufferer 
to go over his woes with him, to paint his troubles 
in deeper colours than he himself can devise for 
them ; but the real duty of the physician is, after all, 
to effect a cure. 

Few books have caused such difficulty to critics 
as Sartor. By an enthusiastic admirer it has been 
termed the greatest book in the English language ; 
by a contemporary it was spoken of as '' d — d 
stuff." ^^ The greatest book in the English language 
it certainly is not, for it deals too exclusively with 
the special conditions of a particular time. The 

^^ First Forty, vol. ii., p. 430. 



46 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart MilL 

first rank in literature is reserved for works which 
handle the things vital to all mankind in all ages, 
the daily life, the familiar sights and sounds of 
nature, the great passions and hopes of all men. 
But just as certainly Sartor is not '' d — d stuff;" 
anything but that, as those who have felt its value 
can testify. It will be worth while to try and get a 
fair understanding of it. 

As to the substance, it is, as we have said, the 
record of a soul struggling towards the light, passing 
from careless unconsciousness to anxiety, from 
anxiety to doubt, from doubt to denial and despair ; 
then suddenly finding the turning-point and reaching 
firm ground. In its form, it is a myth ; we must 
look for its truth in the idea, not in the details. Carlyle 
is using the undoubted right of every author to convey 
his meaning in the vehicle which seems to him most 
suitable. There is profound truth in the parable, but 
the truth is in the meaning, not in its dress : — 

Marchen, noch so wunderbar, 
Dichterkiinste machen's wahr. 

Sartor appears as the Life and Writings of Herr 
Teufelsdrockh, — an entirely imaginary person, it 
need hardly at this period be said, except that 
the picture is so vividly drawn that it is even now 
occasionally mistaken for a portrait.^^ This plan has 
enabled Carlyle to impart as much of his own history 
as he wishes, and at the same time to add any 
fictitious circumstances needed to convey his thoughts. 

^^ I have heard the sayings of the " German Professor 
Teufelsdrockh" quoted with approval in a London pulpit. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 47 

His manner of treating the scheme is throughout 
masterly. Wild conjectures, thrown out merely as 
guesses, which would have sounded absurd from an 
Englishman of his day, come with perfect propriety 
from the mouth of the mysterious little figure which 
haunts the Gasthaits Zur Grunen Ganz, in the 
mythical university-town of Weissnichtwo. It would 
be a grateful task to put together some picture of 
Teufelsdrockh from the scattered touches which 
lie in the pages of Sartor, but we are bound to 
consider here the meaning rather than the form of 
the work. 

The parable has tw^o sides, one speculative, and the 
other practical or moral. The idea of the former is 
simple, though it is worked out with great force of 
detail. It may be stated briefly as " the world in 
clothes." The idea, of course, was not entirely new. 
Swift, in his Tale of a Tub, had suggested the universe 
as " a large suit of clothes which invests every- 
thing,"^* this view being maintained by a sect who 
worshipped at the throne of the Tailor and Goose. 
But Swift made little use of the notion, being satis- 
fied with a superficial application of the train of 
thought which it suggested. By Carlyle it is worked 
out with a completeness which leads to the most 
striking results. Teufelsdrockh has a '^ humour of 
looking at all Matter and Material Things as Spirit,"^^ 
and in this mood all matter is regarded as so much 
clothes, or accessories, of the spirit which it em- 

3^ Swift, Tale of a Tub, sect. ii. 
^^ Sartor, p. 19. 



48 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

bodies. "The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, 
the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it 
but a Garment, a clothing of the higher, celestial, 
invisible, unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of 
bright."^^ The grand mistake of the world is that it 
has come to look upon the accessory as the principal. 
It wraps garment after garment over a man, gar- 
ments of office and honour, and so loses sight of 
the man himself. It is the same in the world of 
thought and feeling ; each thought is invested with 
a formula, each feeling with a symbol, and then the 
formula and the symbol only are seen, and men forget 
that there is, or once was, anything else in them. 
And so the reality does die out, and they remain, 
like empty husks, a source of ill-understood uneasi- 
ness and dissatisfaction — in short, mere shams. 

But it is not with this side of Sartor^ interest- 
ing as it is, that we are most concerned. It is 
the practical aspect of it that illustrates Carlyle's 
position. 

This is mainly to be found in the second book, 
which treats of the life of Teufelsdrockh. The 
author has prepared us for a rather ragged story 
by an amusing description of his materials as 
contained i^i — 

" six considerable Paper-bags, carefully sealed, and marked 
successively, in gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the six 
southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra ; in the inside of 
which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and 
oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's 
scarce legible cursiv-schrift ; and treating of all imaginable 

^^ Sartor, p. 45. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days, 49 

things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal 
history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic 
manner. "^^ 

Nevertheless the story when it does come is clear 
enough. 

Teufelsdrockh is a Httle foundling, delivered one 
evening by a mysterious stranger to the care of old 
Andreas Futteral, ex-grenadier sergeant and regi- 
mental schoolmaster in the Prussian service, and the 
good Gretchen his wife, now living in placid retire- 
ment in the village of Entepfuhl. All enquiries fail 
to discover the genealogy of the little stranger, 
who, after learning his own story, always keeps up 
a pathetic half-despairing hope of some day meeting 
with his real father. A beautiful sketch follows of 
the period of a childhood, unconscious, yet not alto- 
gether without wonder at the sights and sounds of 
Nature. Very skilfully is introduced the first glimpse 
of the dark side of things. 

"Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even 
then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down 
from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that 
glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of 
Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite over- 
shone; 3^et always it reappeared, nay, ever waxing broader and 
broader ; till in after years it almost overshadowed my whole 
canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was 
the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt ; happy he 
for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of 
Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions ; 
yet ever, as basis and as bourn for our whole being, it is 
there." 38 

Meanwhile the young Teufelsdrockh lays out 

3'' Sartor, p. 52. 
25 Ibid., p. 67. 

4 



50 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

his " very copper pocket-money on stall-literature," 
which, as it accumulates, '' he with his own hands 
sews into volumes." He soon strides past the village 
schoolmaster, and is sent to the Hinterschlag-Gym- 
nasiunif an institution on which he comments 
unfavourably. " The Hinterschlag Professors knew 
syntax enough ; and of the human soul this much : 
that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be 
acted on through the muscular integument by ap- 
pliance of birch-rods." ^^ It is much the same at the 
nameless university which succeeds the: Hinterschlag- 
Gymnasium. ^* The hungry young looked up to 
their spiritual Nurses, and, for food, were bidden 
to eat the east-wind."**^ Teufelsdrockh and the friend 
whom he makes here mourn over this unsatisfactory 
state of things, and work out the best conclusion 
possible, namel}^, to do the utmost they can towards 
educating themselves. ** Here are Books, and we 
have brains to read them ; here is a whole Earth 
and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on 
them. Frisch zu T"^^ In the striking and humorous 
criticism of the university,'*^ as well as in the resolu- 
tion arrived at, those who know the details of 
Carlyle's early years will see that he was making 
use of his own experiences. 

At the university Teufelsdrockh begins that long 
course of painful enquiry which afterwards brings 
him down to the depths. Here, too, he opens the 
question which always looms so largely over the 

39 Sartor, p. 73. ^^ Ibid., p. 81. 

^0 Ibid., p. 79. ^2 Ibid., pp. 76-79. 



The _ Prophet of the Latter Days. 51 

horizon of a poor man — How shall I earn a 
living? The immediate answer, accepted with small 
faith in its permanence, is the profession of the law, 
a course which, as we know, Carlyle once attempted. 
Teufelsdrockh's abilities are recognized, but his 
originality is too great to be appreciated : the world 
is willing to be amused by him as a curiosity, but 
it does not see its way to help him. In society 
his* shy pride and hatred of shams make him an 
awkward figure. He has the unpardonable gift of 
sarcasm, and occasionally uses it. He is requested 
to write an epitaph on a deceased notability, and, 
with a pedantic adhesion to historical accuracy, 
produces an inscription''^ over which thousands of 
readers have shrieked with laughter, but which 
would assuredly make the strangest figure in a 
well-conducted churchyard. 

But the crowning offence is yet to come. 
Teufelsdrockh, almost a beggar, without connec- 
tions, with no hope of employment, and with an 
exterior which makes the polite world shudder, has 
the audacity to fall in love with a fair dowerless 
maiden of (more or less) high degree. Whether this 
episode was consciously suggested by Carl3de*s 
acquaintance with Margaret Gordon we need not 
trouble to speculate. No sketch of a type-life could 
be at all complete without the introduction of the 
well-nigh universal incident. Teufelsdrockh is not 
entirely despised by the fair one herself, but it is 
needless to Say that her relatives, especially her 

^^ Sartor^ p. 91. 



52 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

" Duenna Cousin, in whose meagre, hunger-bitten 
philosophy the reUgion of young hearts was, from 
the first, faintly approved of," ^^ soon put a stop to 
the affair. In these practical days parents and 
guardians do not enquire about a young man's 
character ; their duty towards their daughters and 
wards leads them to take an interest only in his 
" plans and prospects." 

This is the final stroke to any hopes Teufelsdrockh 
may have nourished of finding his calling by one 
of the conventional methods. Henceforth he is an 
outcast, and must pilgrim alone over untrodden 
ways to some City of Refuge. Urged by a ''name- 
less Unrest," like lo by the gadfly, he wanders up 
and down through the earth, seeking peace and 
finding none. The world tells him that it is his 
duty to seek happiness, but happiness seems to fly 
from him as he pursues it, and he is not without a 
suspicion that happiness, even if it could be attained, 
were hardly worthy to be considered the main object 
of a man's life. 

" Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Pas- 
sion ; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction 
others ^7^q/if by? I know not, only this I know, If what thou 
namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 
With stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. 
But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of 
Conscience to the diseases of the Liver ! Not on Morality, 
but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold : there brandishing 
our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the 
Devil, and live at ease on the fat things /ze has provided for 
his elect.'* ^^ 

With other philosophies it is the same. The 
^ Sartor, p. loi. *^ /did., p. 112. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 53 

Teufelsdrockh who has " the humour of looking at 
all matter and material things as spirit," can hardly be 
expected to find absorption in any of the pursuits that 
satisfy men to whom a primrose is only a primrose. 
His position is too rare to attract fellow-sufferers; 
he wanders on alone, down to the deepest gulfs of 
despair. One thing only saves him from absolute 
wreck—'' I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would 
abate no jot of my allegiance to her. ' Truth ! ' I 
cried, ' though the Heavens crush me for following 
her ; no Falsehood ! though a whole celestial Lubber- 
land were the price of Apostasy.' " ^^ Of real religion 
he sees the beauty, nay the absolute necessity ; but 
he cannot believe in the reality of any existing form. 
His insatiable spirit of inquiry arises from a desire 
to know^ the truth, not from a wish to explain away 
a disagreeable duty. 

At last there comes reHef. After a fit of wild fear, 
in which his imagination has pictured to him a whole 
universe of nameless terrors, he suddenly asks him- 
self, What, after all, is the worst that can befal me ? 
It would be a crime to attempt any paraphrase of 
such an essential passage : — 

" Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in 
the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog- 
day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little 
Rue Saint-Thomas de VEnfer, among civic rubbish enough, 
in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchad- 
nezzar's Furnace ; whereby doubtless my spirits were little 
cheered ; when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and 
I asked myself, ' What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a 
coward, dost thou for ever pip and whimper, and go cowering 

^® Sartor, p. 113. 



54 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

and trembling ? Despicable biped ! what is the 'siim-total of 
the worst that lies before thee ? Death ? Well, Death ; and 
say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man 
may, will, or can do against thee ! Hast thou not a heart ; 
canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; and, as a Child of Free- 
dom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, 
while it consumes thee? Let it come then ; I will meet it- and 
defy it ! ' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of 
fire over my whole soul, and I shook base Fear away from me 
for ever. I was strong, of unknown strength ; a spirit, almost 
a god. Ever from that time the temper of my misery was 
changed ; not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation, 
and grim, fire-eyed defiance. 

" Thus had the Everlasting No {das ezvige Neiii) pealed 
authoritatively through all the recesses of my being, my Me ; 
and then it was that my whole Me stood up, in native God- 
created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. Such 
a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may that 
same Indignation and Defiance, in a ps3'chological point of view, 
be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said, ' Behold, thou 
art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's) ; ' 
to which my whole Me now made answer, ' I am not thine, but 
Free, and for ever hate thee ! ' " ^^ 

The importance of this passage for our imme- 
diate purpose is, that Carlyle has himself acknow- 
ledged it as an exact reproduction of his own 
experience.^^ 

The extreme pressure is now relaxed. Teufels- 
drockh can leave the Me with a grim indifference, and 
look into the Not-Me which surrounds him. Accord- 
ingly w^e have a wonderful chapter of observation, by 
which we are made to feel instinctively that a kindly 
study of our fellow-creatures and the world around us 
is a wholesome relief from morbid introspection. But 
Carlyle does not leave us here. He has got as far 

^'' Sartor^ p. ii6. 

4& First Forty ^ vol. i., p. loi. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 55 

as Voltaire ; but he is by no means content with the 
negative philosophy of Ferney. He has come safely 
through the Valley of the Shadow; but he means to 
reach the Delectable Mountains. " Our wilderness 
is the wide world in an Atheistic Century, our Forty 
Days are long years of suffering and fasting ; never- 
theless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also 
was^ given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of 
battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life 
or faculty is left." ^^ Again he attacks the problem of 
happiness, feeling that here lies the knot. It is the 
thing that all men strive after ; it is likely, therefore, 
to have something to do with the universal dissatis- 
faction. The solution in this case too, as in the 
other, comes by a sudden inspiration. What, after 
all, do men mean by happiness ? If it be the satis- 
faction of all conceivable desires, it is evidently vain 
to look for it so long as possibility continues to 
transcend actuality. But if, again, it be looked upon 
as a reward of merit, to be nicely apportioned to 
desert, there is a simple way out of the difficulty. 
What if the merits that men plume themselves on 
are extremely doubtful in character ? 

" I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity ; of what 
thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that 
thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel 
it a happiness to be only shot ; fancy that thou deservest to 
be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. 
. . . Make thy claim of wages a zero, then ; thou hast the 
world under thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write : 
' It is only with Renunciation {Entsageii) that life, properly 
speaking, can be said to begin.' " ^'^ 

*^ Sartor, p. 127. ^° Ibid., p. 132. 



56 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

And once more : — 

"Foolish Soul ! what Act of Legislature was there that thou 
shouldest be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right 
to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to 
ibe Happy, but to be Unhappy ! "^^ 

So by turning to the other side of the picture 
we get the answer to the riddle — not rights, but 
duties : — 

. " Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action. 
ITherefore, Do the duty which lies 7iea?'est thee, which thou 
Ifenowest to be a duty ! Thy second duty will already have 
fcecome clearer."''^ "Love not Pleasure; love God. This is 
jthe Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved : 
nvherein whoso walks and works it is well with him."^^ 

This is not the place at which to discuss the value 
of Carlyle's teaching ; we are at present anxious to 
ascertain only what that teaching was. But I cannot 
forbear inserting, as commentary on the train of 
thought which led to the '' Everlasting Yea," a passage, 
written indeed long afterwards, but relating almost 
to the same period as that in which Carlyle was then 
living, by Mill himself, till then an avowed apostle 
of the theory which Carlyle had just been denouncing. 
The words occur in that chapter of his Autobiography 
which corresponds most closely to the Sartor; — 

If\ << Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds 
I fixed on some object other than their own happiness. . . . The 
1 only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external 

J» to it, as the purpose of life." ^* 

With the second book closes the vital part of 

^^ Sartor, p. 132. '"^ Ibid., p. 133. 

^2 Ibid., p. 135. ^^ Autobiography, p. 142. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 57 

Sartor, regarded as a picture of Carlyle's spiritual 
history. The remainder is occupied with wonderful 
speculations on institutions and social problems, 
which show that the writer has thought deeply and 
with great original force. The main idea is still the 
" Clothes-philosophy." Religion, politics, sociology, 
speculation of all kinds, are passed under review, and 
all found to be labouring under the same disease. 
Everywhere men mistake the shadow for the sub- 
stance, the material for the spiritual. On all these 
questions Carlyle's views appear later on, and it will 
be better to treat them as applied teaching than as 
mere speculation. We have seen that the central | y 
precept of his teaching is simple — '* Love not 
pleasure, love God." Let Duty, not Happiness, be 
the Ideal. And this will give us the key to his 
message. Nevertheless, that we may get some idea 
of the power and faculty with which that message 
was to be delivered, we may take one splendid pas- 
sage as a specimen of the prophet's gifts. It occurs 
in the chapter entitled Natural Supernatiiralism^ in 
which the deepest questions that can agitate the 
mind of man are handled with a power of thought 
which can leave scoffers no excuse for pretending 
to despise the intellectual abilities of the man whose 
teaching so ill accords with their inclinations. 
Carlyle has been musing over immortality, space, and 
time ; touching reverently, almost fearfully, the great 
mysteries of life. Suddenly he bursts out : — 



" O Heaven ! it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we 
not only carry each a future Ghost within him, but are, in very 



1 



58 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

deed, Ghosts ! These Limbs, whence had we them ; this 
stormy Force ; this Hfe-blood with its burning Passion ? They 
are dust and a shadow ; a Shadow-system gathered round our 
Me ; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine 
essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his 
strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; force dwells 
in his arm and heart ; but warrior and war-horse are a vision ; 
a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, 
as if it were a firm substance : fool, the Earth is but a film ; it 
cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond the 
plummet's sounding. Plummet's ! Fantasy herself v/ill not 
follow them. A little while ago, they were not ; a little while, 
and they are not — their very ashes are not. 

" So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. 
Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a Body ; 
and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission 
APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends : one 
grinding in the Mill of Industry ; one hunter-like climbing the 
giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed to pieces 
on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow: — and then the 
Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly vesture falls away, and 
soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like 
some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's artillery, 
does this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, in long- 
drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. 
Thus, like a God-created, fire breathing Spirit-host, we emerge 
from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; 
then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are 
levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, 
which is but dead, and a vision, resist Spirits which have 
reality and are alive ? On the hardest adamant some foot- 
print of us is stamped-in ; the last Rear of the host will 
read traces of the earliest Van. But whence? — O Heaven, 
whither ? Sense knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it 
is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 

' We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
Is rounded with a sleep.' " ^^ 

With these burning words on his hps, the prophet 
^5 Sartor, pp. 184, 185. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days, 59 

descended from his lonely watch-tower, and took up 
his abode among men. 

IV. 

At first no one seemed to heed him. It is hard 
for an intelligent reader in these days to understand 
how the critics of those failed to discover that the 
author of Sartor Resartus was a man of genius 
in the best sense of the term. The real secret 
probably lay in the nature of the critics themselves. 
It needs, if not genius, at least great ability, to dis- 
cover genius in a new form, and there was extremely 
little genius in the critical world of 1834. A gene- 
ration which worshipped Macaulay was not likely 
to appreciate Carlyle. Strangely enough, in this new 
flight, as before, the first encouraging sign came from 
over the sea, from the America about which Carlyle 
often said hard things. 

The struggle of life was as stern as ever. It was 
the old story of the fight between conscience and 
convention. Temptation came now in the form of an 
offer of a post on the Times, a prospect which to the 
natural man must have been alluring enough. Carlyle 
had to live by his pen, he was within small distance 
of actual want, and here was an offer from the first 
and the most generous journal of the day. But the 
tacit conditions were fatal. The writer in the Times 
must accept the creed of the Times, and in this creed 
Carlyle did not, could not, believe. So he gratefully 
declined the offer, and turned resolutely to face 
poverty again. With some people it is necessary 



6o Thomas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

to go into details. They do not understand moral 
heroism unless it results in a pecuniary sacrifice. 
For such people this incident ma}^ be instructive, 
and difficult to get over. For those who understand 
Carlyle it will pass, as an act to be admired indeed, 
but almost as a thing of course. 

Carlyle was ultimately preserved from bankruptcy 
by a scheme devised by one of his few really sincere 
friends — a plan of public lecturing. The experiment 
was moderately successful, and was repeated. The 
lecturer felt that he gave sterling value for his wages, 
but he saw the dangers of the practice, and deter- 
mined to make it only a temporary expedient. 

His real life lay in the preparation of one of the 
most striking and impressive works which has ever 
appeared in England. We remember his worship of 
truth, and his steadfast belief in the futility of shams. 
He was now to support this faith by an illustration. 
Some fifty years before the time at which he wrote, 
France had become a perfect incarnation of falsehood. 
The king did not govern, the nobles had no duties, 
the army was filled with officers who could not fight, 
the administration with men who could not administer, 
the priesthood with priests who did not believe. The 
duty of the finance-minister was to hide the inevitable 
approach of the evil day under a mask of lies ; on 
all hands was starvation, discontent, disbelief; but 
all that was influential in the nation combined to 
assume, in spite of facts, that things were going well. 

Then the crash came. With one accord the starved 
multitudes rose and declared war on this mockery of 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 6i 

rule. The task of destruction was soon accomplished ; 
but the more difficult task of re-creation remained. 
The nob/esse failed to achieve it, the botirgeois failed, 
the sansculottes failed. The disease of falsehood had 
eaten into the souls of all men ; nothing that they 
attempted would stand the test of facts. At last 
came one who refused to shut his eyes, who adhered 
strictly to fact, and what the whole nation had in 
vain tried to do, he by his single will accomplished. 
Fact was too strong for formulas. 

On this text Carlyle preached his sermon. The 
French Revolution is generally spoken of as a 
history, and it undoubtedly illustrates Carlyle's very 
decided views on the subject of history ; but it is 
primarily a sermon. It presupposes in its readers 
a knowledge of the bare facts, just as a preacher 
assumes a knowledge of the Bible in his hearers. 
As a preparation for the examination-room the book 
cannot be recommended ; it was sent as a message 
-by its author to the hearts of his countrymen, as a 
message to be pondered over and laid to heart, as a 
thing of practical importance to be understood. This 
seems the true light in which to look at the work. 
Carlyle had no expectation that it would bring him 
fame or reward ; he was burdened with the weight 
of his convictions, and could not rest till they were 
told. Men had not read Sartor, — perhaps the 
form had been to blame. But here they should see 
that in the actual matter-of-fact history, which mere 
text-books would verify, those principles which he 
had so vehemently asserted in Sartor did actually 



62 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

govern the world. And so, in sorrow of heart and 
sore discouragement, with the near prospect of 
starvation before him, he put feature after feature, 
line after line, into the picture, till at last it appeared 
as we know it now, so vivid and powerful, so resist- 
less in its teaching, that we almost shudder to read it. 
Men who can smile at the blood-and-thunder creations 
of Poe and Duboisgobey, who can view with perfect 
equanimity Irving's study of the death of the old 
French king, and listen unmoved to the tragedian's 
delineation of Eugene Aram's terrors, are held to 
this picture of Carlyle's by a resistless fascination, a 
nameless dread that the horrible thing will repeat 
itself some day. It is all so real ; the teller of the 
story seems to have lived through those awful scenes, 
to be describing men whom his own eyes have beheld. 
Scarcely anything so vivid had been produced since 
Dante wrote his Inferno. 'Mt was like a load of 
fire burning up my heart," said Carlyle himself of it,"" 
and we can well understand his meaning. Robes- 
pierre, and Marat, and Carrier, and Philippe Egalite ; 
the Noyades, the September massacres, the Bastille, 
— all rise before us with the reality of life. There is 
no straining after the horrible, — the author shows that 
he can see beauty as well as ugliness, for nothing is 
more wonderful in the book than the exquisite chapter 
in which Charlotte Corday appears, performs her 
allotted task, and vanishes again for ever. But the 
facts are stern, and with relentless accuracy we see 
the drama move on to its dread fulfilment. 
^^ Second Forty ^ vol. i., p. 128. 



TJlc P 1^0 P J Let of tJie Latter Days. 63 

It is pleasant, for tlic sake of England's credit, to 
be able to say tliat this noble challenge did not fall 
on utterly deaf ears. Slowly but certainly men 
grew to realize that here was amongst them one of 
a different order from themselves, one whose heart 
was great with inspired thoughts, whose life was 
devoted to a grand ideal. From the publication of 
the French Revolution may be dated the acknow- 
ledgment of Carlyle's genius. Henceforward he 
speaks as a power; still, it is true, misunderstood 
and only half-believed, but no longer passed over 
in silence. lie had spoken of the past ; he was now 
to apply his teaching to the present. 

The Reform Bill had not brought the Millennium. 
There had been immense political activity, new 
institutions, and alterations in old forms ; but there 
was no evidence of any improvement in the national 
character. Electors were as bribable as ever, 
speeches in Parliament and out of it just as in- 
sincere. The (juestions that really interested the 
House were questions of power and place ; there 
seemed as little sense of responsibility as before. 
The effect of the change in the composition of the 
Lower House was to produce, as the ruler of the 
nation, presumably the wisest and greatest character 
of the day, — Lord Melbourne. Such a leader was 
only possible in a Parliament which had definitely 
taken compromise as its watchword, which was 
determined to shut its eyes to all graver c^uestions, 
and live simply on sufferance. 

But the Reform agitation had been too deep and 



64 Thojnas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

serious to pass entirely away without another effort. 
Beyond the range of the middle-class politicians, 
whose ideal was Lord Melbourne and Compromise, 
there was a band of agitators who declined to accept 
half-measures, and whose indignation at what they 
deemed a betrayal of trust was deep and sincere. 
The views of these men had taken shape in the 
famous "Charter" of 1838, and Chartism was 
henceforth to be reckoned with as a political and 
social force. Instead of seeing in it the natural 
outcome of existing causes, instead of recognizing 
the justice there was in it, and setting seriously to 
work to remove the causes of the agitation, the 
politicians of the day agreed to treat the phenomenon 
as trivial, even pretended to doubt its existence. 
Nowhere can obliquity of vision be so readily com- 
manded as in the House of Commons. Things 
which are not convenient to be seen are treated, 
by a dexterous use of the forms of the House, as 
if they were not. Such was the way in which a 
Reformed Parliament agreed to treat Chartism. It 
was the old story of the ladder that had done its 
work. 

This conduct filled Carlyle with indignation. The 
deepest sympathies of his nature were with the class 
from which the majority of the Chartists were 
drawn, the class from which he himself had sprung. 
He could see that under the somewhat pedantic 
exterior of Chartism there lay a real meaning, and 
his reading of the difficulty well illustrates his wa}'' 
of looking at a subject. The political philosopher of 



I 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 65 

the day, if asked to exi)lain the meaning of Chartism, 
would probably have defined it as "a demand for 
the Charter," and, if i)re.ss((l further, might have 
explained that *' the Charter" meant universal suf- 
frage, vote by ballot, and so on through the famous 
Six Points. This was not Carlyle's way of looking 
at the matter. Let us hear his view in his own 
lai^guage : — 

" Chartism mcjins the l)itl('r (lisc()i)t("iit ^rown licrcM* and I) 
mad, the wioiij^ ('oiidition, tlKMcfoif;, or tlu* wrong disixxsition, 4 
of tho working classes (W England." ■"'^ 

These were plain words, and if either alternative 
were correct the matter was one of the gravest 
import, one which demanded the instant attention of 
those who professed to rule the nation. The action 
of Parliament on the question Carlyle summed up 
in a few caustic sentences. "Alas ! the remote ob- 
server knows not th(.' nature of Parliaments : how 
Parliaments, extant there for the British Nation's 
sake, find that they are extant withal for their own 
sake. . . . Hitherto, on this most national of 
(juestions, the Collective Wisdom of the Nation 
has availed us as good as nothing whatever."'^'" 

Then follows a remarkably acute criticism of the 
statistics with which the pro[)hets of smooth things 
had been proving the non-existence of Chartism. It 
must have astonished those.' who knew Carlyle 
only as the mystic philosopher of Sartor^ to read 
such cool, matter-of-fact remarks on sublunary 

•'"^ ('hartiwt, " Misa^llanics," vol. vi., p. no. 
•'" Ibid.^ p. 112. 

5 



66 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

matters. But it is really a little surprising to hear 
Carlyle denounced as " unpractical " by those who 
profess to have read his works. When he chose 
to go into details, Mill himself could not be more 
scientific. He seems almost to have taken pains, in 
the earlier chapters of Chartism, to show that he 
did not overlook the facts which every one else saw. 
He gives the new Poor Law its due meed of praise, 
he recognizes the fact that a change in the condi- 
tions of industry is inevitably attended with much 
temporary suffering, he appreciates the immense 
possibilities of good that lie in the new discoveries 
in mechanics and physics. But an advocate is 
surely not bound to confine himself to his adver- 
sary's side of the case. And Carlyle is here 
acting as the advocate of the working classes. Is 
the practical man he who sees only his own side 
of the question, or he who sees both, all the sides ? 
A manufacturers' Parliament had a clear enough 
appreciation of the advantages which the new state 
of things brought to their own class, but they showed 
no disposition to share these advantages with the men 
whom they used as their instruments to gain them. 
The new Poor Law was well ; it abolished a fright- 
ful nuisance. But it was only negative. It pro- 
hibited idleness under penalties, but it made no 
effort to provide work. Change in the conditions of 
labour might be good, but at least it was the duty 
of those to whom they brought wealth to seek to 
minimise the sorrows of those to whom they brought 
suffering. No positive effort was made to improve 



I'he J^rophct of tlic T Aider Days. 67 

matters. Whctlicr it was incrc selfishness, or 
vvliclhci' it was tliat tlicy were appalled hy tlie 
dil'lieulties of the problem, the j)()Iili(iaiis of tlx^ day 
adopted a doctrine wliicli seemed to ('arlyU.- tlic 
most cowardly and futile of all doctrijics wliicJi 
could possibly be [)rofessed by men who pn.'tended 
to govern — the doctrine of laissez-faire, or the 
reckiction of State actioji lo a minimum, "a chief 
social principle which this j)r(,'scnt wrilci-, for one, 
will by no manner of mcins believe in, but pro- 
nounce at all fit times to be false, heretical, and 
damnable, if ever augiit was."^'" lie regarded it as 
a sheer resignation by rulers of the v(,'ry task they 
were called on to do. if they felt their inability to 
govein, let them honestly resign (lieii- position. But 
to continue to goveiii in name, under cover of such 
a policy, was to draw the wages of an office after 
giving up all pretence of doing tlu! woik. A theory 
which assumed the capacity of eveiy (jue to judge of 
his own interests seemed to Carlyle, emancipated as 
he was from formulas, to be simply a lie. What 
capacity could the peasant or operative, forc(Ml to 
W(jrk all his waking houi's for a bare subsistence, 
be supposed to leserve foi- sjieculation upon his 
interests? The one "right" of such a m.'in was to 
be governed wise ly and faithfully, led and guided to 
find his true interest. "Ah, it is not joyful mirth, 
it is sadder than tears, the laugh Humanity is forced 
t(j, at laissez-faire applied to ])oor peasants, in a 
world like our Europe of the year i<S39.""" Against 
"" Chartism, j). 121. "" //y/V/., p. 131. 



6S TJiomas Carlylc and John Stuart Mill. 

this principle Carlyle once for all hurls down a great 
defiance ; he is its sworn foe for the remainder of 
his life. 

^or the rest, his method is characteristic. Not in 
reforming of institutions lies the remedy, but in 
the reformation of character. The real grievance of 
the working classes is not even their hunger, but 
the feeling of injustice which the conduct of their 
rulers has forced upon them. All around them they 
see duties neglected. An aristocracy might at least 
realize that it had to do something besides preserve 
game ; a plutocracy, that its sole calling was not to 
live in luxury. The landowner must recognize the 
fact that every peasant on his land is under his care, 
to be helped and put in the way of work. The 
capitalist must be made to see that he does not 
fulfil his duty to his hands when he pays them their 
bare wages, and then turns them off to starve. By 
his action he has fixed their mode of life, and he is 
responsible for its continuance, or at least for a 
substitute. At any rate. Government might do two 
things, which on no respectable theory could be said 
to infringe the sacred liberty of tlie subject. It might 
educate the nation's children, and provide a scheme 
of emigration for those whom it did not want to 
keep at home. 

" For all this of the ' painless extinction,' and the rest, is in 
a world vvliere Canadian Forests stand unlelled, boundless 
Plains and Prairies unl)rokiMi with the i)longh ; on the west 
and on the east green desert spaces never yet made white 
with corn ; and to the overcrowded little western nook of 
Europe, our Terrestrial Planet, nine-tenths of it yet vacant or 



The PropJicl of tJic Latter Days. 69 

t('iiaiiti-(l by ii(im;i(li-s, is slill (Myiii^, Come ;iii(l lill iik-, coiiu; 
and n-;!)) in<' ! And in an lOn^^Iand, willi vvcaiUi and means 
lor iMdving such as no nation ever bcl'oic had. With Hhi|)S, 
with warsliips rottiii;.,' idh-, which, hut biihlcn mov*; and not 
rot, nii/^^ht bridge; all oci^ans. Willi trained mkmi, (uhicatcul to 
pen and practise, to administer and a( t ; l^rielleHS liarristi^r.s, 
(;har)j;eless (!ler^y, taskless Scholars, laii^niishin^ in all court- 
honses, hidinj; in obscure garrets, besie;^in/i; all antechandx-rs, 
in passionate' want of sim|)ly one Ihinj^^, Work ; with as 
many llaH'-pay Oliicers ol' bolli Services, weariu;; tlu'itiselves 
dowii in wretched Irdinni, as mi^ht lead an I'anij^rant host 
larger than Xerxes' was! .... Alas! where are now thcr 
llengsts and Alarics of our still-/.;lowinj^, still-ex|)aiidinK 
ICtuope; who, when their hom<' is /.^rown too narrow, will 
eidist, and, like lire-|)illars, guide onwards those- superfluous 
uiasses of iudoinitabh^ living Valour ; ecpupped, not now with 
tlu; battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam-engines and 
l)loughshanr ? When- are they ? — Preserviuj? their gjiin(\" "' 

It is ail iiwkward fact lor those who ticat Carlylc's 
teaching as unpractical that within a twclvcinonth 
of tlie |)iihlicalio!i of Chartism two distinct crioits 
were made by Government to cairy its reconmiend- 
ations into effect. At the close of tlie year 1H39, in 
spite of the bitter opposition of the hiissrr^-Jdin: 
school, a bill was passed which ])rovi(Ie(l lot- an 
incn.'ase of the education grant, upon condition of 
increased inspection by oflicials of the way in which 
it vv.i;. .idministered. And in Janu.ny J.S/jo was 
established the Colonial Land and I'jiii^iation 
IJoard, for the pm'pose of assisting the spontaiK-ous 
efforts of the over-crowded centres to iclieve them- 
selves by emigration. I>e)th the'se- efforts, we-rc Small 
in themselves, l)iit they ai(! notewoithy as among 
the- first syiiipte)iiis e)!',!!! aw.'d<ene(l sense e)f duty on 

"' C/ia/ii.sf/t, pp. 1H5, 186. 



yo Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

the part of the ruling classes, and as the initial steps 
in a line of policy which has increased in import- 
ance ever since that day. Chartism was bought 
eagerly by those whose welfare Carlyle had at heart, 
and doubtless helped powerfully to turn the tide 
against philosophic Radicalism. The seed had been 
sown, but the harvest was not yet. 

More and more the optimism of the Edinburgh 
Review seemed at fault. The Repeal agitation in 
Ireland was assuming a terrible aspect, intensified 
by the economic difficulties of the country. The 
distress was spreading to England, and in the 
northern towns thousands of half-starved operatives 
clamoured for work. The remedy proposed was 
free trade, and there was no lack of sympathy in 
Carlyle for the heroic labours of Cobden and his 
associates. He could not speak of the Corn Laws 
without a scornful indignation which would have 
made him a priceless acquisition to the army of the 
League. But he saw that the Corn Laws were 
surely doomed, and did not care to waste his 
strength in slaying the slain. And he saw too, 
though Cobden and his friends did not, that Free- 
trade alone could not save England. It is not 
without a first feeling of surprise that w^e read the 
glowing anticipations of universal happiness in 
which the advocates of the League at this time 
indulged. Yet we ought, perhaps, hardly to wonder. 
The Free-traders were men of intelligence and 
boundless energy, but their whole lives were for the 
time wrapped up in their immediate work, and they 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 71 

had no eyes for anything beyond. Carlyle was of 
a different order. He saw that the repeal of the 
Corn Laws would have only a negative effect; 
it would remove an absurd stumbling-block, but it 
would not take the blind man by the hand and lead 
him into the path of safety. It was only laissez- 
faire after all, and against laissez-faire Carlyle had, 
as we know, declared war. His eye was fascinated 
by the huge masses of unorganized labour scattered 
up and down in the land. His wide knowledge of 
history convinced Jiim that if this raw material was 
to develop into really permanent prosperity, there 
must be some attempt to organize it. Industrial 
England of 1840 was not an organism which had 
become able, by inherited instinct, to develop and 
manage itself ; it was essentially a new and untried 
thing, working under new conditions. As well expect 
a child to feed and educate itself, as a mass of toiling 
mill-hands to rise to real intelligence and consistency 
without help. Here, put in a form which appears 
so often in Carlyle's works, is the problem which 
seems so difficult to answer in any way but his : — 

" Why, the four-footed worker has already got all that this 
two-handed one is clamouring for ! How often must I remind 
you ? There is not a horse in England, able and willing to work, 
but has due food and lodging, and goes about sleek-coated, 
satisfied in heart. And you say. It is impossible. Brothers, 
I answer, if for you it be impossible, what is to become of 
you ? It is impossible for us to believe it to be impossible. 
The human brain, looking at those sleek English horses, refuses 
to believe in such impossibility for English men."*^^ 

In saying that Carlyle was concerned not so much 

^2 Past and Present, p. 19. 



72 Thomas Carlyle and JoJmi Stuart Mill. 

with phenomena as with the causes of phenomena, 
we ought to make one striking exception. There 
was one phenomenon which seemed to him to 
transcend in vital importance all other facts. This 
was the appearance of a great man. The tendency 
v-" of science is to lay stress on events rather than 
men, to minimize the agent that the process may 
be exalted. In his lectures on Heroes, delivered 
in 1840, Carlyle laid down a defiantly opposite 
theory of the universe. The secret of the world's 
history for him lay in its great men. They were the 
causes, not the effects, of movements and tendencies. 
He accepted them as great ultimate facts of history, 
not as incidents to be accounted for. This view 
becomes henceforward another cardinal article of 
his creed, and we see it insisted on in the work 
to which we must now look. 

Carlyle's message to the world of industrial dis- 
tress is contained in the book known as Past and 
Present^ published at the beginning of the year 
1843. 

A few masterly touches at the beginning show 
us how clearly he appreciated the really pressing 
anomalies of the times. 

" England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply 
for human want in every kind ; yet England is dying of 
inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms 
and grows ; waving with yellow harvests ; thick-studded with 
workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of 
workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest, and 
the willingest our Earth ever had ; these men are here ; the 
work they have done, the fruit they have realized, is here, 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. y2> 

abundant, exuberant on every hand of us ; and behold, some 
baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying. Touch 
it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers ; none 
of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it ; 
this is enchanted fruit!" ^^ 

Might it not be that the answer to the problem 
was simpler than men thought, that they had over- 
looked it because it was so simple ? Such things had 
happened. Men had been trying all sorts of external 
remedies for the diseases of society ; it did not occur 
to them to think that the quality of the men they 
set to guide it might have something to do with 
the matter. It is always so much more pleasant to 
criticise schemes than men, others than ourselves. 
So long as men persisted in assuming that the course 
they were on was necessarily the right one, they 
would hardly be likely to find a solution which lay 
in another direction. There was endless experi- 
menting upon institutions and political machinery. 
What if men were to look a little at results, in the 
character of themselves and their rulers ? 

Here Carlyle breaks off abruptly to draw a most 
striking and suggestive picture of a long-forgotten 
state of society, a glimpse into which had just been 
afforded him by the publication of the Camden 
Society's edition of Jocelynde Brakelond's Chronicle. 
Jocelyn tells an artless but vivid tale of a great 
English monastery in the twelfth century. The 
monastery, an isolated unit, under its own laws 
and rulers, formed no unlikely miniature of a greater 

^^ Past a}id Present, p. i. 



74 Thomas Carlyle and John S heart Mill. 

kingdom. Carlyle found in Jocel^'^n's history, written 
without theory or other purpose than as a record of 
fact, the account of two rulers of this little territory. 
The one had been idle and worthless, content to 
let things go their own way, practising an uncon- 
scious laissez-faire ; with the result that his abbey 
went fast along the road to ruin. The other had 
been a wise and resolute man, who put his own 
comfort out of sight, and made his duty his first 
thought. His duty was to govern, not to enjoy 
himself; and he did it. Under him the little king- 
dom had flourished ; abuses had been corrected, old- 
standing evils remedied, and a picture of industry 
and genuineness substituted for the old caricature 
of idleness and falsehood. 

Ars est celare artein. There is hardly a note or 
comment all through this part of the book. With 
exquisite skill the old past is made to live before 
us; the uneventful life of a quiet corner of bygone 
England unfolds itself calmly and clearly. The 
artist seems to have no other object than to make 
us see with our own eyes what is actually going on. 
Yet we feel clearly that all this has an application to 
the present. The deep laws of life are the same for 
us as for Abbot Samson and his monks in the Abbey 
of St. Edmund. Our circumstances have altered 
strangely, but in ourselves we are the same. 
There is a new door, but it is the old lock. A silent 
sermon, yet for all seeing creatures most eloquent, is 
this wonderful piece of historical art. 

But, unfortunately, there are people, a great many 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 75 

people, wlioarc not seeing ereatures. So in the tliiitl 
division of his work Carlyle turns again to present 
conditions, and reads off one by one the features of 
the time. First he notices the universal toleration 
with which shams are regarded. Nothing is what it 
seems to he ; the duty of the workman is not to do 
genuine work, but to persuade people that he has 
doiit-' it. 

"The V(;ry Paper 1 now vviilc f)n is made, it .S(;ems, paMly 
of |)la.st(;r-linic well-smoof Ixd, .ind obstructs my writing! 
Yon are hu^ky if you can lind any good Paper,— any work 
really done ; search wher(; you will, JVom highest Phantasm 
a|)cx to lowesl ICnchantcd basis.' '" 

This accusation has been signally seconded by 
subsequent events. In f<S43 lOnglish manufactures 
were in recpiest all over ICuroj^e as the most genuine 
in the market. Now the world has found out that 
they cannot be relied on, and Carlyle's words read 
like a prophecy in the vulgar sense of the term. 

" No one man can depart from the Irnth williont damag(! to 
hims(;ir; no oik- million of nn-n ; no Twenty-seven Millions of 
m(Mi. . . . ' Khetoric all this ? ' No, my brother, very singular 
to say, it is Fact all this. Cocker's Arithmetic is not truer. 
Forgf)tten in these; days, it is old as the foundations of the 
Universe, and will <rn(lui(; initil tlu* Universe ceascr. It is 
I'orgoltc'n now; and tin; lirst UK'ntiou of it puckers thy sweet 
countenance into a snec-r: but it will be brought to mind 
again, — unl<\ss indeed the Law of Gravitation chance to cease, 
and men iind that they can walk on vacancy.""'' 

Amid all these shams it was a comfort to find 
something in which men really did believe, were it 

''' Past (171(1 Present, p. 121. 
"•'' Ibid., p. 123. 



76 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

ever so unworthy of honour. This one fact Carlyle 
found in the worship of wealth. " Thank Heaven 
that there is even a Mammonism, any\\'\m.^ we are 
in earnest about," '^^ Dilettanteism, which divided 
the upper world with Mammonism, was far more hor- 
rible, for its very essence was a denial of everything. 
The adaptation of the Koran story of the Dead Sea 
Apes to the polite of the day was not perhaps cal- 
culated to conciliate their attention ; but Carlyle was 
too much in earnest to think of conciliation. Ernst 
ist das Lcben is the motto of Past and Present. 
Again and again he returns to the charge. Is there 
nothing better to be done than to earn money ? Is 
that man fulfilling his destiny who draws a hundred 
thousand a year from a country in which he does 
no stroke of work ? Has an employer of labour no 
other concern with the souls and bodies of his 
labourers than to pay them their wages ? Is it the 
duty of governors merely to let things alone ? Is 
there nothing wrong when in one street thousands 
of shirts lie rotting for want of wearers, and in the 
next lie thousands of naked men waiting to be 
clothed ? Is the pursuit of happiness really the 
highest vocation to which man can be called ? Oh 
for one of the old heroes to show a degenerate world 
what could be done by real self-sacrifice ! " My 
brother, the brave man has to give his life away.""'' 
It is not till a. man realizes this truth that the possi- 
bility of greatness dawns upon him. Let him leave 

^^ Past and Present^ p. 126. 
'^"^ Ibid., p. 175. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. "jy 

thinking of his prospects and turn simply to his 
duty. 



<« ( 



But my future fate?' Yes, thy future fate, indeed! 
Thy future fate, while thoumakest// the chief question, seems 
to me — extremely questionable. . . . Work is Worship , . . 
yes. . . . Its cathedral the Dome of Immensity, — hast thou 
seen it ? coped with the star-galaxies ; paved with the green 
mosaic of land and ocean ; and for altar verily the star-throne 
of the Eternal ! Its litany and psalmody the noble acts, the 
herojc work and suffering, and true heart-utterance of all the 
Valiant of the Sons of Men. Its choir-music the ancient 
Winds and Oceans, and deep-toned, inarticulate, but most 
speaking voices of Destiny and History, — supernal ever as of 
old. Between two great Silences : 

* Stars silent rest o'er us, 
Graves under us silent 1 ' 

Between which two great Silences, do not, as we said, all 
human Noises, in the naturalest tunes, most /rtY<?niatu rally 
march and roll ? " ^^ 

By the side of this splendid pieceof exalted eloquence 
we may place a fragment of prophecy as cool and acute 
as ever man of business framed. The contrast will 
give us perhaps the best idea we can spare time to 
get of the range and depth of Past and Present, 
and the horoscope cast by the later extract may be 
interesting to readers of the present day. 

"Yes, were the Corn Laws ended to-morrow, there is 
nothing yet ended ; there is only room made for all manner 
of things beginning. The Corn Laws gone, and Trade made 
free, it is as good as certain this paralysis of industry will 
pass away. We shall have another period of commercial 
enterprise, of victory and prosperity; during which, it is likely, 
much money will again be made, and all the people may, by 
the extant methods, still for a space of years be kept alive 
and physically fed. The strangling band of famine will be 
loosened from our necks ; we shall have room again to breathe ; 

^^ Past afid Present, p. 200. 



"J?) Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

time to bethink ourselves, to repent and consider. A precious 
and thrice-precious space of years ; wherein to struggle as for 
life in reforming our foul ways ; in alleviating, instructing, 
regulating our people ; seeking, as for life, that something like 
spiritual food be imparted them, some real governance and 
guidance provided them ! It will be a priceless time. For 
our new period or paroxysm of commercial prosperity will 
and can, on the old methods of ' Competition and Devil take 
the hindmost,' prove but a paroxysm ; a new paroxysm — 
likely enough, if we do not use it better, to be our last."^^ 

The reader of the year 1888 is invited to reflect 
upon this passage. 

"Yes, but Liberty, Liberty," exclaims the politician; 
"what right has anyone to guide another?" To 
whom Carlyle's reply is stern enough : — 

" Despotism is essential in most enterprises ; I am told, they 
do not tolerate ' freedom of debate ' on board a Seventy-Four ! 
Republican senate and plebiscita would not answer well in 
Cotton Mills. And yet observe there too : Freedom, not 
nomad's or ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom ; this is in- 
dispensable. We must have it, and will have it ! To recon- 
cile Despotism with Freedom : well, is that such a mystery ? 
Do you not already know the way? It is to make your 
Despotism just. Rigorous as Destiny ; but just too, as 
Destiny and its Laws. The Laws of God : all men obey 
these, have no ' Freedom ' at all but in obeying them. The 
way is already known, part of the way ; and courage and some 
qualities are needed for walking on it ! " "^^ 

For some time, to Carlyle at least, the horizon 
, seemed to be brighter after this storm. It is not a 
small testimony to the worth of Peel's character, that 
two such men as Carlyle and Cobden, so different in 
powers and mental attitude, yet both so strikingly 
free from prejudice and conventionality, should have 

^^ Past and Prese?it, p. 159. 
^0 Ibid., p. 241. 



The Frop/iel' of the Latter Days. 79 

singled him out as the only possible hope of the 
English nation. Cobden's admiration led him to 
prefer the old-fashioned Tory to the leaders of his 
own party. Carlyle saw, in the man who had dared 
to face a storm of reproach and calumny, a statesman 
of a higher order than the Palmerstons and the 
Russells. Peel had started boldly on the path of 
free-trade in spite of the most ominous signs of dis- 
approval from his followers. He had ultimately 
repealed the Corn Laws. He had dealt boldly and 
effectively with O'Connell's attempt at rebellion. 
He had placed the finances of the national bank 
on a firm footing. He had made provision for Irish 
education in the teeth of sectarian bigotry. 

But in a constitutional country a minister must do 
more than govern wisely. He must keep his party 
well in hand, by cajolement or bribery of some kind. 
Chatham had despised the humbler arts of '' manage- 
ment," but even Chatham had fallen. It was the 
same with Peel. He demanded fresh powers to 
meet the Irish difficulty, and his false friends saw 
their chance. They united with his avowed enemies 
to drag him from office, and to seat a government 
which had promptly to make the same demand for 
which Peel had been ejected. Again Peel stood out 
nobly, and begged the House, if it felt any remorse 
for its conduct, to show it by strengthening the 
hands of the existing government. With such a 
statesman to fall back on, there was still hope ; but 
meanwhile he was out of office, and things again 
went awry. 



8o Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart 3Iill. 

For the Irish Famine of 1846 no Government was 
directly responsible, although the severity of its 
results was largely due to the thoroughly vicious 
system of land-tenure which had been allowed to 
grow up in the country. But it soon became 
apparent that political disaffection was mingled 
with genuine distress, encouraged to activity by 
the fate of Peel's attempt at firm government. The 
Ministry had to ask for a Coercion Act, for a Treason 
Felony Act. The conviction of Mitchel was fol- 
lowed by the abortive insurrection of Smith O'Brien 
and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. 
Things were no better in England. The monster 
Chartist meeting was fixed for April 1848, and 
though, thanks to the admirable preparations made 
to meet it, the plan failed of its immediate object, 
there was sufficient energ}/- to show that the life of 
Chartism was by no means extinct. The country 
gentlemen were taunting the manufacturers with the 
condition of their operatives, and the manufacturers 
thought that they repelled the charge if they pointed 
to similar features in the lot of the agricultural 
labourer. Palmerston was bent on embarking the 
nation in a war for the sake of an enterprising 
foreigner who wished to make a thousand pounds 
by brandishing the terrors of English protection. 
Abroad, things were in the wildest confusion. In 
France the abdication of Louis Philippe had been 
followed by an attack of Bonapartism which 
threatened to produce endless complications. In 
Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Hungary, thrones 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 8 1 

were rocking in the storm of revolution. Even to 
Prussia, the one country in Europe in which the art 
of government appeared to be understood, the move- 
ment had spread. BerHn had been declared in a state 
of siege. Everywhere was uncertainty and agitation. 

Carlyle could not see this unmoved. It seemed to 
him that the day of judgment for the sins of the 
world was about to arrive, and he determined to 
make one heroic effort to avert the catastrophe. The 
Latter Day Pamphlets were the desperate effort of 
a man who saw, to persuade others of what was 
actually passing before them. 

It is hard for us, who live in the days which 
Carlyle's teaching had helped to mould, to realize 
the audacity of the Latter Day Pamphlets. But no 
magazine, great as was Carlyle's name by that time, 
would allow them to appear in its pages ; they were 
published simply as political tracts. It was seriously 
supposed by a section of the reading public that their 
author had gone mad or taken to drink. For the 
moment no one dreamed of attempting to act upon 
their teaching. It may be worth while to see what 
were the outrages perpetrated by the offending work. 

The remedy for the universal wreck of old systems 
was everywhere announced to be Democracy, that is 
to say, the government of all by all, or, as Carlyle 
preferred to put it, no government at all. Govern- 
ment, by the nature of the case, supposes a ruler and 
a ruled ; if all men were to be rulers there could be 
none left to be ruled. Democracy, in its purest form, 
was evidently impossible. 

6 



82 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

But this was practically admitted, and all the 
nations of the earth were clamouring for consti- 
tutions, that is to say, were asking to be governed by 
paper rather than by men. Everything was to go 
by vote ; it was assumed that voting would settle 
everything. The engine which was to reform Europe 
had been tried for nearly two hundred years in 
England, and it was just becoming clear that it 
was a failure. All the arguments from ancient 
democracies were foolish, for the conditions were 
wholly different. So it was too with the one example 
of even a moderately successful modern democracy — 
America. 

" Cotton crops and Indian corn and dollars come to light, 
and half a world of untilled land, where populations that 
respect the constable can live, for the present zvithout GoYQxvi- 
ment : this comes to light ; and the profound sorrow of all 
nobler hearts, here uttering itself in silent, patient, unspeakable 
ennui, there coming out as vague elegiac wailings, that there is 
still next to nothing more. 'Anarchy//?/^ a street-constable,' 
that also is anarchic to me, and other than quite lovely." ^^ 

For the fatal, to Carlyle the blasphemous, ten- 
dency of Democracies was to set up sham-governors, 
men whom the world would not trust with the care 
of any enterprise which it really valued, but whom it 
complacently accepted as rulers because they were 
colourless and inoffensive. 

" Alas, there lies the origin, the fatal necessity, of modern 
Democracy everywhere. It is the Noblest, not the Sham- 
Noblest ; it is God-Almighty's Noble, not the Court-Tailor's 
Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must in some approxi- 

^^ Latter Day Pa77iphlets, p. 17. 



The Pi^ophet of the Latter Days, %2) 

mate degree be raised to tlic supreme ])lace ; he and not a 
counterfeit, — under penalties ! Penalties deep as d(^atb, and 
at length terrible as hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend." ^^ 

But a deeper meaning lay under these symptoms. 
Men were trying to dispense, not only with govern- 
ment, but with all other human relations. The 
world presented itself to Carlylc much as it did to 
Burke, as a thing of infinitely complex construction, 
every fibre of it united with every other fibre, every 
part dependent on every other for mutual assistance 
and support. 

" I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipic, 
can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart 
for it : will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical 
fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the 
centre of gravity of the Universe.''" 

And it was supposed that all this complex mass 
of relationships and duties could be held together by 
the ''sole nexus of cash-payment," that the duties 
of every man to the world could be adjusted and 
settled by the periodical payment of certain sums 
of money. Certainly there were signs that the old 
framework was breaking up. Freedom of divorce 
was beginning to be talked of, servants no longer 
considered themselves members of their master's 
family, but simply as labour-merchants performing 
certain bargains ; in a word, the tendency of things 
was towards anarchy. This Carlyle saw, long before 
Mr. Matthew Arnold's famous book was written. 
Thirty thousand jieedlewomen, the newspapers said, 

^2 Latter Day Pamphlets, p. 19. 
"^"^ Sartor Resartus, p. 70. 



84 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

were starving upon agony wages in London alone, 
and yet on all hands was the cry that decent semps- 
tresses could not be had for any money. Three 
million paupers were "rotting in forced idleness," 
and yet everywhere work was waiting to be done. 
The boast of liberty in such circumstances seemed 
to Carlyle to be mockery. 

" When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty, 
Voluntary Principle, Dangers of Centralisation, and the like ? 
It is really getting too bad. For British Liberty, it seems, the 
people cannot be taught to read, British Liberty, shuddering 
to interfere with the rights of capital, takes six or eight 
millions of money annually to feed the idle labourer whom it 
dare not employ. For British Liberty we live over poisonous 
cesspools, gulley-drains, and detestable abominations ; and im- 
potent London cannot sweep the dirt out of itself. ■ British 
Liberty produces — what ? Floods of Hansard Debates every 
year, and apparently little else at present. If these are the 
results of British Liberty, I for ore move we should lay it on 
the shelf a little, and look out for something other and 
farther." ^^ 

The thing was not to boast of political names, but 
to find real governors. 

Carlyle's next attack was perhaps the boldest he 
ever made, and to superficial thinkers it still seems 
the most questionable. The Abolitionist agitation 
had started an idea in the minds of the proverbially 
obtuse English nation, and, as usual, they ran it to 
death. " A blind, loquacious pruriency of indis- 
criminate Philanthropism, substituting itself, with much 
self-laudation, for the silent, divinely-awful sense of 
right and wrong." ^^ A most flagrant instance of this 

^^ Latter Day Pa??iphlets, p. 25, 
^^ Ibid., p. 43. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 85 

tendency had just come under Carlyle's notice. He 
had visited Millbank prison, and had seen scoundrels 
of the profoundest kind placed in a condition which 
he, simple as were his tastes and small his wants, 
felt inclined to envy. No one who knows anything 
of Carlyle will accuse him of hard-hearted ness ; he 
was compassionate to an almost blamable extent. 
But the sense of justice was strong in him, and it 
roused his indignation to think that hard-working, 
innocent men and women should be taxed almost of 
necessaries to keep such scoundrels in comfort. And 
he saw under the philanthropic movement a con- 
science-stricken acknowledgment of injustice. Men 
felt that the misery and the crime were partly their 
own fault; and it was easier to soften the criminal's lot 
than to remove the causes which led him into crime. 
But this seems to be only a digression. Carlyle 
has started with a fierce attack on the existing theories 
of government; he turns now to their practical results. 
The machinery of the State departments was ill 
calculated to stand the fire of such a weapon as 
Carlyle's criticism. Those were the days when ap- 
pointments went openly by what was euphoniously 
termed '^ interest ;" in other words, by jobbery. The 
question was not the merits of the candidate, but the 
claims of his supporters. The inquiry of 1855 had 
not revealed the depths of the abuses, but there was 
a general assumption that the Civil Service was not 
a thing that could be boasted about. In this attack, 
as well as that on the philanthropic movement, we 
get a decided confirmation of Carlyle's diagnosis from 



86 Thomas Ca7dyle and John Stitart Mill. 

a man who had not indeed Carlyle's genius and in- 
sight, but who had the gift of seeing things which 
were plainly before him. The novels of Charles 
Dickens show that, even to one whose whole nature 
led him to take an optimistic view of social arrange- 
ments, these things appeared to be too bad. 

To Carlyle the inefficiency of the governing machine 
seemed far more important than the decay of the 
consultative organ. Two things he found funda- 
mentally wrong in Government offices. The work 
was ill done, and it was the wrong kind of work. 
Serious charges these, which, however, no one of the 
day seemed inclined to dispute. Even grave official 
personages declared the departments to be almost 
past reform. Carlyle's suggestion went as usual to 
the heart of the matter. No good work could be 
expected so long as no pains were taken to select 
good workmen. An incompetent w^orkman could 
not produce satisfactory work merely because he 
was put into a Government office. You cannot make 
rules of thumb for the discovery of the best men ; 
but at least you can remove obstacles from the way 
of attaining them. For instance, the maxim which 
requires the responsible head of a department to 
be elected to Parliament as a preliminary to ap- 
pointment, is simply a premium upon anarchy and 
ineptitude, for an office held on such a tenure can 
never command the confidence of subordinates, nor 
are the qualifications needed for a successful fight 
at the hustings the least guarantee of administrative 
talent. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. Sy 

And if, by Heaven's blessing, says Carlyle, you 
do get some able men, there is work enough for 
them to do. Foreign affairs are very much better 
left alone ; they amount generally to mere itching. 
But in the Home Office, and the Colonial Office ! 
There are idle soldiers to be made to earn their pay, 
convicts to be turned into useful pioneers of labour 
in ^distant lands, a people to be educated in the 
elements of knowledge, colonies to be organized, 
paupers to be set to work. If men would only 
realize that these things have to be done, not left 
alone, half the battle would be over. 

The next subject of attack is one which every 
thinking politician, from Aristotle downwards, has 
recognized as the special evil of popular governments, 
but which is perhaps the most difficult of all poHtical 
evils to cure. It is hard to forbid a" man to recom- 
mend himself by every artifice in his power, more 
especially if he speak, not evil, but good, of the 
powers that be. Yet it is a demonstrable fact that 
the institution known as " stump-oratory" is fatal to 
the character of governments created by its means. 
The stump-orator speaks what he thinks will please 
his audience, not what he believes to be true. He 
promises anything that sounds most attractive. It 
is his only chance of success. He is elected to 
Parliament, to office. Here he must do, not what 
he believes to be best, but what he has promised. 

The malady had spread to other organs. In all 
the professions. Church, law, and medicine, the suc- 
cessful man was the man who could talk, not the 



SS Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

man who could act or think. Even in hterature, 
whose action may be defined to be thought, there 
was the same worship of mere words. 

From the stump-orator the prophet passes naturally 
to Parliament, the goal of the stump-orator's ambition. 
Perhaps nowhere, in the whole of his critical writings, 
does Carlyle show a more masterly appreciation of 
realities than in his estimate of the past and present 
meaning of Parliament. After an historical analysis 
of the rise and development of the institution with 
which Professor Stubbs himself could hardly find 
fault, he proceeds to point out how the real function 
of Parliament has passed into other hands. 

" In countries that can stand a Free Press, — which many 
cannot, but which England, thanks to her long, good training, 
still can, — it is evident the National Consult or 7'eal Parlia- 
mentary Debate goes on of itself, everywhere, continually. Is 
not the 72>;z^j" newspaper an open Forum, open as Forum never 
was before, where all mortals vent their opinion, state their 
grievance ; — all manner of grievances, from loss of your 
umbrella in a railway, to loss of your honour and fortune by 
unjust sovereign persons ? One grand branch of the Parlia- 
ment's trade is evidently dead for ever ! And the beautiful 
Elective Parliament itself is nothing like so living as it used to 
be. If we will consider it, the essential truth of the matter is, 
every British man can now elect himself \.o Parliament with- 
out consulting the hustings at all. If there be any vote, idea, 
or notion in him, on any earthly or heavenly thing, can he not 
take a pen, and therewith autocratically pour forth the same 
into the ears and hearts of all the people, so far as it will go ? 
Precisely so far, and, what is a great advantage too, no farther. 
The discussion of questions goes on, not in St. Stephen's now, 
but from Dan to Beersheba, by able-editors and articulate- 
speaking creatures that can get others to listen to them. This 
is the fact, and it demands to be attended to as such, — and 
will produce changes, I think, by-and-by. 

"What is the good of men collected, with effort, to debate 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 89 

on uhe benches of St. Stephen's, now when there is a TiTnes 
newspaper ? Not the discussion of questions, only the 
ultimate voting of them (a very brief process, I should think !) 
requires to go on, or can veritably go on, in St. Stephen's now. 
The honourable gentleman is oftenest very wearisome in 
St. Stephen's now ; his and his constituency's aye or no is all 
we want of the honourable gentleman there ; all we are ever 
like to get of him there, — could it but be had without admix- 
tures ! If your Lordship will reflect on it, you will find it an 
obsolete function, this debating one of his ; useless in these 
new times, as a set of riding post-boys would be along the 
line'of the Great Western Railway."''^ 

But Parliament, having lost its true function of 
safety-valve, had taken to a function for which it was 
wholly unfitted, the task of government. Never was 
a more impossible attempt. In the whole course of 
history only two parliaments had succeeded in govern- 
ing — the Long Parliament of the Civil War, and the 
French Convention. And these succeeded -by-virtue 
of the fact that each had in ultimate reserve a power 
which was in the highest degree "unconstitutional" 
and unparliamentary — Cromwell, and the guillotine. 
The force of this criticism we shall have occasion to 
notice further on. 

But it is in the last of the terrible Pamphlets 
that Carlyle reaches the full height of his power. 
Always when he is dealing with institutions he be- 
trays an impatient sense of the unimportance of the 
subject ; it is only when he is speaking of character 
that his inspiration is supreme. Under the title of 
Jesuitism he sweeps together all the falseness and 
baseness which he sees in the world around him, and 

^^ Latter Day Pamphlets, pp. i88, 189. 



go Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

sears it with the lightning of his wrath. In his enthu- 
siasm for genuineness, Carlyle had once humorously 
expressed his admiration of a thoroughgoing lie. 

" Glorious, heroic, fruitful for his own Time, and for all Time 
and all Eternity, is the constant Speaker and Doer of Truth ! If 
no such again, in the present generation, is to be vouchsafed 
us, let us have at least the melancholy pleasure of beholding 
a decided liar."^^ 

But with cant, the falsehood which half deceived 
itself as well as others, Carlyle waged relentless war. 
Everywhere he saw it, in the determination of men to 
build not on actual visible truth, but on conventions 
and shams. And most loathsome of all was the fact 
that this worship of cant so often came from the lips 
of those who made a fair show in the flesh. 

" ' Be careful how you believe truth,' cries the good man 
everywhere ; ' composure and a whole skin are very valuable. 
Truth — who knows ? — many things are not true ; most things 
are uncertainties, very prosperous things are even open 
falsities that have been agreed upon. There is little certain 
truth going. If it isn't orthodox truth, it will play the very 
devil with you.' " "'^ 

Those who think Carlyle's indignation excessive 
can hardly have reflected how deeply cant really 
goes into our nature. Not to speak of religion, 
which is saturated with it, there is hardly any 
province of human affairs in which it is not predomi- 
nant. In the very clothes we wear, we consult not 
our own convictions of what is best, but our antici- 
pations of what our neighbours will consider most 

" Count Cagliostro, " Miscellanies," vol. v., p. 68. 
^^ Latter Day Pamphlets^ p. 264. 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 91 

fitting. In our food we are often ashamed to avow 
preferences which may seem to argue discredit. The 
man whose income is i^500 a year thinks it his duty 
to " keep up a position " warranted only by an income 
of twice that amount. We even engage in " amuse- 
ments " for which we have not the sHghtest rehsh, 
because it is comme il faut to pretend to Hke them. 
Thejnost utterly unmusical family must keep a piano 
in its drawing-rcom,and profess to admire Beethoven ; 
the most illiterate millionaire must have his '' study." 
And this is the practice of people who profess on 
Sunday to believe that '' all liars shall have their part 
in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." 

Against this wide-spreading falsehood Carlyle lifts 
his voice in one passionate appeal, passing from 
fierce indignation to pathetic reproach, which, as it is 
almost his last direct utterance on the subjects that 
lay nearest his heart, I shall venture to give entire. 
It is long to write, but so splendid an example of the 
prophet's powers and teaching will bear repetition. 

" How can you believe in a Heaven — the like of you ? 
What struggle in your mean existence ever pointed thither- 
ward ? None. The first heroic soul sent down into this world, 
he, looking up into the sea of stars, around into the moaning 
forests and big oceans, into life and death, love and hate, and 
joy and sorrow, and the illimitable loud-thundering loom of 
Time, — was struck dumb by it (as the thought of every earnest 
soul still is) ; and fell on his face, and with his heart cried for 
salvation in the world-whirlpool : to him the ' open secret of 
the Universe ' was no longer quite a secret, but he had caught 
a glimpse of it, — much hidden from the like of us in these 
times : ' Do nobly, thou shalt resemble the Maker of all this ; 
do ignobly, the Enemy of the Maker.' This is the ' divine 
sense of Right and Wrong in man ' ; true reading of his 
position in this Universe for evermore ; the indisputable God's 



92 Thomas Cai4yle and John Stuart Mill. 

message still legible in every created heart, — though speedily- 
erased and painted over, under ' articles,' and cants, and empty 
-ceremonials, in so many hearts ; making the 'open secret' a 
very shut one indeed ! — 

" My friends, across these murky floods of twaddle and 
philanthropism, in spite of sad decadent ' world trees,' with 
their rookeries of foul creatures, — the silent stars, and all the 
eternal luminaries of the world, shine even now to him that has 
an eye. In this day as in all days, around and in every man, are 
voices from the gods, imperative to all, if obeyed by eveji 
none, which say audibly, ' Arise, thou son of Adam, son of 
Time ; make this thing more divine, and that thing,— and 
thyself, of all things ; and work, and sleep not ; for the Night 
Cometh, wherein no man can work.' He that has an ear may 
still hear. 

" Surely, surely this ignoble sluggishness, sceptical torpor, 
indifference to all that does not bear on Mammon and his 
interests, is not the natural state of human creatures ; and is 
not doomed to be their final one ! Other states once were, or 
there had never been a Society, or any noble thing, among 
us at all. Under this brutal stagnancy there lies painfully 
imprisoned some tendency which could become heroic. 

" The restless gnawing ennui which, like a dark dim ocean- 
flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian deeps, 
begirdles every human life so guided — is it not the painful 
cry even of that imprisoned heroism ? Imprisoned it will 
never rest ; set forth at present, on these sad terms, it cannot 
be. You unfortunates, what is the use of your money-bags, of 
your territories, funded properties, your mountains of posses- 
sions, equipments and mechanic inventions, which the flunkey 
pauses over, awestruck, and almost rises into epos and pro- 
phecy at the sight of ? No use, or less than none. Your skin 
is covered, and your digestive and other bodily apparatus is 
supplied ; and you have bi^t to wish in these respects, and 
more is ready ; and — the bevils, I think, are quizzing you. 
You ask for ' happiness,' ' O give me happiness ! ' — and they 
hand you ever new varieties of covering for the skin, ever new 
kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus, new and ever new, 
worse or not a whit better than the old ; and — and — this is 
your happiness ? As if you were sick children ; as if you 
were not men, but a kind of apes ! 

"I rather say, be thankful for your ennui; it is 3^our last 
mark of manhood ; this at least is a perpetual admonition and 
true sermon preached to you. From the chair of verity this, 



The P^^ophet of the Latter Days. 93 

whatever chairs be chairs of cantxiy. Happiness is not come, 
nor like to come ; ennui, with its great waste ocean-voice, 
moans answer, Never, never. That ocean-voice, I tell you, is 
a great fact ; it comes from Phlegethon and the gates of the 
Abyss ; its bodeful never-resting inexorable moan is the voice 
of primeval Fate, and of the eternal necessity of things. Will 
you shake away your nightmare and arise ; or must you lie 
writhing under it, till death relieve you ? Unfortunate crea- 
tures ! You are fed, clothed, lodged as men never were before ; 
every day in new variety of magnificence are you equipped and 
attended to ; such wealth of material means as is now yours was 
never dreamed of by man before : — and to do any noble thing, 
with all this mountain of implements, is for ever denied you. 
Only ignoble, expensive, and unfruitful things can you now do ; 
nobleness has vanished from the sphere where you live. The 
way of it is lost, lost ; the possibility of it has become incredible. 
We must try to do without it, I am told. — Well, rejoice in 
your upholsteries and cookeries, then, if so be they will make 
you 'happy.' Let the varieties of them be continual and 
innumerable. In all things let perpetual change, if that is a 
perpetual blessing to you, be your portion instead of mine ; 
incur that Prophet's curse, and in all things in this sublunary 
world ' make yourselves like unto a wheel.' Mount into your 
railways ; whirl from place to place, at the rate of fifty, or if 
you like of five hundred miles an hour : you cannot escape 
from that inexorable all-encircling ocean-moan of ennui. No : 
if you would mount to the stars, and do yacht-voyages under 
the belts of Jupiter, or stalk deer on the ring of Saturn, it 
would still begirdle you. You cannot escape from it, you can 
but change your place in it, without solacement except one 
moment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will con- 
tinue with you till you wisely interpret it and do it, or else 
till the crack of Doom swallow it and you. Adieu : Att revoir.'"''^ 

In this whirlwind of rebuke and exhortation the 
prophet vanishes, and leaves us only the man for 
future study. His greatest work was now over, 
and it remained only for him to live out his days 
in the calm discharge of humbler duties. His next 
production was a strange contrast to the fire and 

^^ Latter Day Pamphlets, pp. 284 — 286. 



94 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

fury of the Pamphlets — the loving, tender biography 
of his dead friend, John Sterhng. In the exquisite 
pages which close what is perhaps the most perfect 
memorial of friendship to be found in English litera- 
ture, Carlyle almost seems to be bidding farewell to 
a world in which he has laboured so faithfully. But 
there was work for him to do yet. For thirteen 
years he toiled patiently, earnestly, at a task, the 
completion of which was to raise him to the 
unquestioned sovereignty of the intellectual world 
of his day. Many a man might be proud of 
Friedrich as the sole accomplishment of a life- 
time ; to Carlyle it was a task performed in the 
evening of life, when rest had been fairly earned, 
and none could have cast the stone of reproach had 
it been fully enjoyed. As a history, Friedrich of 
Prussia falls to be touched on elsewhere ; we are 
here only concerned to point out how the same 
moral strength which had made its author's character 
a power among men, shines everywhere through its 
pages. There is the same patient seeking after truth, 
the same fiery scorn of Aork neglected or half-done, 
the same indignation at all baseness and stupidity, 
the same unwearied sense of justice, the same firm 
faith in the ultimate triumph of right. The fascination 
which carries the reader without faltering through the 
ten volumes of Friedrich is not by any means solely 
due to the skill with which the subject is handled. 
Behind the work we see the workman, earnest, 
fateful, presiding like a destiny over the creation 
of his hands, and we acknowledge the presence 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 95 

of a master. The confidence which he inspires is 
irresistible, we never think of questioning his con- 
clusions. It does not surprise us to hear that even 
in Germany at this hour Carlyle's book is made the 
groundwork of the highest teaching on the period of 
which he wrote. In the best qualities of German 
authors Carlyle shows himself equal to them, and he 
has a power which few of them possess. 

Shortly after the publication of the last volumes of 
Friedrich there happened an event which cannot 
but be regarded as the climax of Carlyle's life. In 
the days of his poverty he had lived, almost unknown, 
in Edinburgh, the chief city of his native land. From 
a struggling student he had risen, by the sheer force 
of his own personality, to be the acknowledged head 
of English literature, perhaps the truly greatest power 
in England. Though he had received little recog- 
nition from the land of his birth, his heart was with 
her still. He was not the man to forget his early 
struggles, or the scenes in which they had been 
passed. 

And now he was to return in honour to speak, 
out of the treasures of his wisdom, words of counsel 
to those who were entering, even as he had done 
fifty years before, upon the struggle of life. It 
would require his own pen to paint that scene 
when he, aged and grey, but unconquered still, 
stood before the young warriors who were gathering 
to his banner. We know how strangely in those 
days the world was drawn to the spot. Men 
of letters, men of science, politicians, gentle and 



96 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

simple, travelled hundreds of miles in cold- April 
weather to hear an old man speak for an hour to 
a band of college students. It was felt by the world 
that here was one whose speech was not mere words, 
but something far deeper and more precious. It was 
the man himself, and not his tongue, that told the 
story. Worn with the weight of seventy years, 
spent by the tempests of thought which had raged 
over his soul, almost crushed by the intensity of 
convictions which would give him no rest till he 
had spoken them abroad, with the shadow of a great 
unknown sorrow waiting just before his feet, the 
man, as we see him there, is the most eloquent of 
living sermons. The words which he spoke, read in 
the dry light of posterity, seem nothing very wonder- 
ful. He had nothing to add to his former teaching. 
It may even be said that many men could proclaim 
the value of diligence, honesty, reverence, zeal for 
truth, frugality, hope. True, many men can proclaim 
this by word of mouth. But how many men can 
live it from day to day, from hour to hour, through a 
life of seventy years ? That was the real meaning 
of the man who stood in the Edinburgh Hall. And 
old and young felt that such was his meaning, and 
rose up to do him honour. One who has been 
brought before a crowd of 3^oung faces, and thought 
for a moment of the awful possibilities of good and 
evil which lie behind those eager eyes, can realize 
something of the feelings which must have rushed 
over Carlyle's mind as he stood there. One who 
has contrasted Carlyle's life and work with the lives 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 97 

and doings of the multitudes who hved around him 
can guess something of the thoughts which must 
have been in the minds of those who heard him. 

The next news was that Mrs. Carlyle was dead. 
Carlyle had left her in perfect confidence of coming 
back in a few days to tell her how he had fared. 
Immediately after his speech he had written a word 
of love, and again in his short visit to the home of 
his youth, begging for an answer. The answer was 
the silence of death. 

For a man who did not love his wife he was 
strangely overcome. Never, through all his trials, 
had his spirit utterly broken down, but this was a 
crushing blow. Henceforward his concern with the 
world was that of a man who was leaving it, and 
wished to set his house in order. The end was not 
yet ; for fifteen years he lingered, and one may 
almost hope that these long days of waiting were 
happier, after the first shock was over, than his 
former life had been. The portrait of this time 
shows the defiant features of earlier days softened 
into an expression of musing tenderness. There 
was no dimming of the clear brain, bodily health 
was still granted. In his seventy-sixth year Carlyle 
uttered a word, calm, unanswerable, which changed 
the opinion of England on the great struggle between 
France and Germany. Four years later he wove a 
series of beautiful stories out of the old lore of 
Norway. But these seemed only to fill up the 
time; calmly, almost longingly, he waited the end. 
Honours rained in upon him, and these, so far as 

7 



98 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

they were proofs of men's love, he valued, but for 
their own sake they were nothing. Some he would 
not accept ; he had not looked for reward other than 
the approval of his conscience. So at length, in the 
silver crown of his years, he passed gently away, 
and slept with his fathers in the land which had 
given him birth. He had earned his rest. 



V. 

One brief glance we must take, by way of summary, 
at the figure with which we have journeyed so long, 
and from which we are now to part. 

Grandeur must, I think, be the first thought that 
strikes us as we look at Carlyle. Among the crowd 
of his contemporaries, the Hallams, De Quinceys, 
Macaulays, Broughams, Grotes, Bulwers, he towers 
like a giant. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, 
Shelley, Keats, were all before his day ; they do not 
dispute the field with him. And who else can be 
named in the same breath ? Browning, perhaps, 
but the place of Browning is yet unfixed in the 
temple of fame. Perhaps, too, in the world of 
physical science, the world of Brewster, Faraday, 
and Darwin, there were to be found his intellectual 
compeers, but we can never place the man who 
observes on the same level with the man who 
teaches. Of European names, if we except Goethe, 
whom he acknowledged as his master, there is but 
one who can be ranked with him — Victor Hugo. He 
was the king of his generation, the true ava^ dvBpMV, 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 99 

with the eye to see, and the heart to bear and do. 
He was the central figure of his age, and we look 
even now in vain for his equal. 

But, next to his grandeur, we notice his width 
and scope. Moralist, poet, historian, critic, counsellor, 
orator ; and in all supremely great. And there is 
nothing in him of that littleness which shrinks from 
small duties for fear of hurting its dignity. From a 
criticism of Novalis to the mending of a farm-gate he 
is the same simple, earnest worker. He has, indeed, 
an antique simplicity, which of itself would mark 
him as one to be admired. The plainest food, the 
coarsest clothes, the smallest house, he took, from 
choice, not, in later days at least, from necessity- 
Tobacco was his only luxury, that and, if means 
permitted, a horse, but if means did not permit, he 
could do without it. His dearest friends were, all 
his life, the members of his own family circle ; the 
author of Friedrich was never happier than in the 
Annandale farmhouse. The time breeds not many 
such men. 

Hardly less conspicuous were the other elementary 
virtues of his character. Purity, earnestness, real 
humility of spirit, tenderness towards suffering, 
sympathy with wrong, it would hardly be necessary 
to mention these but for the fact that the world 
delights to stone its prophets if it can. Upon this 
sad subject no word can be better than one of 
Carlyle's own. *' No man is hero to his valet," runs 
the proverb. '' No," said Carlyle, commenting upon 
the aphorism ; " but that is generally the valefs 



lOO Tho7nas Caidyle and John Stuart Mill. 

faulty Men who have bound themselves hand and 
foot in the service of the devil, are not likely to be 
enthusiastic over the prophet of God. 

Looking with eyes for defects over Carlyle's life, 

we shall find very little to reward us. Of his sins of 

thought, whatever they may have been, we cannot, 

of course, judge ; we may be fairly sure that he 

himself did not spare them. The one fault which 

did indisputably mar the completeness of his moral 

character is one for which it is not easy to find a 

name. Intolerance, it might be called, or impatience. 

Carlyle loved his fellow-men with a deep pitying 

love ; but their follies and stupidities roused his 

wrath. He looked at them from his own lofty 

standpoint, not from their humbler ground. But 

it must be remembered that his judgments, harsh as 

many of them read, have been in almost every case 

strikingly affirmed by the great critic. Time. It was 

because he saw more, not because he loved less, that 

he was so stern. Still we do not find in his character 

that rare combination of virtues of which we should 

perhaps hardly be able to form an idea had we not 

seen it in one or two rarest examples. To hate the 

sin with a perfect hatred, and yet to cherish and bear 

with the sinner as a loved brother who must be won 

by patient pleading from determined suicide, this is 

the subhmity of moral grandeur, and how many have 

attained to it ? It demands total oblivion of self, 

perfect heroism of spirit. The few, the very few, 

who have reached it have won the world by the 

irresistible fascination of their characters. This, 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. loi 

something of this, was attained by him who, by 
unwearied self-sacrifice, achieved the freedom of his 
beloved country from a tyrant's yoke, and at whose 
death "the little children cried in the streets" — by 
William of Orange. Even nearer to the ideal came 
the great Roman emperor upon whose shoulders 
rested the cares of a whole world, and who, through 
ajife of toil such as few men have borne, retained a 
sweetness of temper and lovingness of thought which 
a St. Francis might have envied. And most of all 
w^as it manifested by him by whose character, as by 
the sublimest of possible standards, all such efforts 
are tried, by him who went about doing good, and, 
for reward, had not where to lay his head. These 
we may well place above Carlyle, but where are the 
others ? 

In intellectual gifts, too, we can find but one fault. 
In almost every department of literature Carlyle's 
knowledge and power were profound. In the world 
of science, of course, there were many provinces 
which he did not profess to know, upon which he 
never pronounced an opinion. But there were 
others of which he has been accused of ignorance, 
simply because his conclusions do not agree with 
the doctrines of those who have assumed the sole 
right to judge. He has been laughed at by logi- 
cians, politicians, economists, metaphysicians, but 
with a strange forgetfulness his critics have omitted 
to point out where he was wrong. Men of letters 
know nothing about science, Carlyle was a man of 
letters, ergo he knew nothing about science — that is 



102 Thomas Carlyle and John Stiiai^t Mill. 

a. quite unexceptionable syllogism provided that both 
premises be correct. But if a man of letters may 
possibly know something of science, or if Carlyle 
was not a man of letters in the exclusive sense which 
the alternative implies, then perhaps the conclusion 
is not quite so indisputable. 

But one defect of intellect, indeed, Carlyle's warm- 
est admirers must allow. His gifts of expression 
were for man}^ purposes unparalleled in power. In 
pathos, in humour, in impressiveness, in imaginative 
force, he finds no rival in modern Enghsh literature. 
But where perfect delicacy of style is required, 
combined with perfect completeness of thought, 
there Carlyle fails. His aesthetic faculties are at 
fault. The final accomplishment of the poet, which 
is so marked a feature of his master, Goethe, is 
wanting to Carlyle. He could never have written 
Keniist du das Land^ he could not even translate 
it respectably. 

But for those who make his style (oh ! the style ! !) 
an excuse for denying his greatness, we can have 
little sympathy. We begin to suspect, with Teufels- 
drockh when his epitaph was rejected, that the 
" alleged defect in the Latinity " is not the real 
secret. People object to hearing unpalatable truths, 
and any excuse is good enough as an escape. 

Are we to proceed to '' account for " this man ? 
Are we to point out that the conjunction of Scotch 
Calvinism with German literature produced Thomas 
Carlyle ? That his Sauerteigs, his Teufelsdrockhs, 
and his Crabbes are the copies of Richter's imagi- 



The Prophet of the Latter Days. 103 

nary creations; that his Sartor is compounded from 
Reinecke der Fuchs and the Tale of a Tub, in about 
equal quantities ? All these, and many more 
influences there were, which he himself has openly 
acknowledged. But that Carlyle and his works 
could be, so to speak, "bred" in this way, — the 
idea is ridiculous. Let me suggest a profitable 
occupation to those who are fond of such pursuits. 
The world could do very well with another Carlyle, 
or even two. It would readily agree to pay a hand- 
some sum to any one who could produce the required 
article. Here then is a chance for the man of science. 
Let him beg, borrow, or steal an infant Scotch Cal- 
vinist, and inoculate him skilfully with German litera- 
ture, especially taking care to educate him in such 
works as will best bear reproduction. Then let him 
exhibit his machine in public and claim the reward 
from a grateful literary world. 

No, Carlyle does not remind me of a machine. 
There is one thing, however, of which he does most 
persistently remind me. Often, as I have sat by 
the blue waters of Lucerne, I have raised my eyes 
towards the south, and looked steadily at the rugged 
mountain which towers, like the advanced guard of 
an army of giants, above the lake. In the morning 
it is rarely clear, ever upon it are clouds and mists, 
and its full grandeur is not seen. At midday the 
sun beats on it, and the forms of pigmy tourists 
scahng its sides break the silent loneliness. But at 
night, when all around is still, when the clouds have 
disappeared, and the sun, and the tourists, then I 



I04 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

have looked again. There it stands now, complete, 
clear, peaceful. High above its neighbours rises the 
rugged cliff, its stern aspect almost, in the peace of 
night, turned to tenderness and welcome. From its 
base, girt with peaceful villages, the eye travels up 
its scar-seamed sides, passing here and there a 
twinkling light. But above all sounds and sight of 
men still rises that lofty form, till at last it rears its 
stately head into the vast arch of night, and stands 
there amid the eternal silence, alone — "alone with 
the stars." That is Carlyle. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE APOSTLE OF BENTHAMISM. 

THERE is a certain abstractedness about the 
lives of men of science which renders them 
peculiaily easy to summarize. When such men 
have reached the point at which they definitely enter 
upon their hfe-work, the records of their existence 
become rather psychological studies than biogra- 
phies in the ordinary sense of the term. Even the 
appearance of their books does not always afford 
a sure clue to their development, for often, as was 
the case with Mill, the order of publication does not 
correspond with the order of composition. The only 
way of arriving at an estimate of their position is by 
directing an analytical process upon their productions 
as a whole. 

This generalization holds good in the case which 
we have now to study. Properly speaking, there 
were only two events in Mill's life — the mental crisis 
which he has described in the fifth chapter of the 
Autobiography, and his friendship with Mrs. Taylor. 
That is to say, these two circumstances only, so far 



io6 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

as we can tell, exercised a really decisive effect on 
the current of his existence. 

We may, therefore, proceed to glance at the 
unusually valuable materials available for a study of 
Mill's younger days, and then, having brought him 
to the point at which his mental direction is fixed, 
we may pass lightly over the remaining circumstances 
of his life, and turn at once to an examination of his 
works. 

Just as it is clear that Carlyle appeals most 
strongly to the moral side of our character, so it is 
equally clear that, if we would see Mill in his most 
significant aspect, we must look mainly at the 
speculative or intellectual side of his life. His moral 
character was, indeed, exceptionally admirable. An 
inflexible love of truth, a perfect candour and great 
humility of judgment, combined with purity of 
conduct, conspicuous generosity, a high sense of 
honour, and unwearied perseverance, are an ample 
foundation for a great and impressive character. 
And as such Mill undoubtedly stamped himself upon 
the minds of those who knew him. But still it is as 
the man of science, the speculative philosopher, that 
he lives. He laid it down himself, as his mature 
opinion, that '' the most important and most univer- 
sally interesting facts of the universe " are the facts 
of physical science. '^^ 

Mill was born in the year 1806. His father, James 
Mill, the author of a well-known work on psychology, 
and a still better known work on the history of 
^° Inaugural Address ^ p. 21. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 107 

British India, appears to have been a man distin- 
guished rather by force than by amiability of 
character. " For passionate emotions of all sorts, 
and for everything which has been said or written in 
exaltation of them, he professed the greatest con- 
tempt." ®^ '' My father was not one with whom calm 
and full explanations on fundamental points of 
doctrine could be expected." ^^ And Mill himself, 
highly as he esteemed his father, had, in his time of 
trouble, to confess that he " was the last person to 
whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help." ^^ 
James Mill was, in fact, a man who lived by his 
intellect only, and chose his associates chiefly by 
reference to their speculative conclusions. 

The main idea of this man with regard to his son's 
education was, that he should be made to acquire 
the utmost possible amount of scientific information. 
The extent to which the son respcnded to the father's 
plans astonishes the youth of average acquirements. 
Mill could not remember the time at which he began 
to learn Greek \>y the pleasing method of committing 
to memory lists of '' vocables." ^^ Sad to say, it was 
not till he was eight years old that he made acquaint- 
ance with Latin, but this neglect was soon atoned 
for. Before the completion of his twelfth year, he 
says, " my father made me study " (the Rhetoric of 
Aristotle) '' with peculiar care, and throw the matter 
of it into synoptic tables." ^^ At the age of thirteen he 

®^ Autobiography ^ p. 49. ^^ Ibid., p. 5. 

82 Ibid., p. 179. 8^ Ibid., p. 11. 

s^ Ibid.., p. 135. 



io8 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

went through a complete course of political economy, 
and before he was sixteen he had read Bentham's 
Traites de Legislation, and decided that by the 
philosopher of Queen's Square '' all previous moralists 
were superseded." ^^ 

The extraordinary effect produced by this relentless 
system of cram is well illustrated by a confession 
which Mill himself makes. " It did not seem to 
me more strange that English people should believe 
what I did not, than that the men I read of in 
Herodotus should have done so." ^^ Doubtless in 
after years Mill believed himself peculiarly fitted 
by this esoteric course of education to ascertain the 
conclusions of unbiassed consciousness, but sceptical 
critics may suggest that in his mind the strong 
•influence of his father's personality took the place 
usually filled by a more complex series of 
impressions. 

It is not perhaps surprising that although, as he 
is careful to inform us, '' I neither estimated myself 
highly nor lowly : I did not estimate myself at 
all," ^^ people sometimes found him "disagreeably 
self-conceited." We all know the unmitigated 
disgust with which older people find themselves 
overcome in argument by an awkward boy in 
his teens, and how they are not always very 
scrupulous in the means they employ to turn the 
tables. By virtue of their superior knowledge of the 
world they generally succeed for the time in putting 
the young aspirant at a disadvantage. But the 

^^ Autobiography^ p. 65. s'' Ibid.^ p. 43. ^^ Ibid., p. 33. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 109 

latter's turn soon comes, and his adversaries are 
then probably extremely sorry that they provoked 
the combat. 

In truth, by this process of forcing Mill acquired 
and always retained a shade of pedantry. '' The 
education which my father gave me," he says, " was 
in itself much more fitted for training me to know 
thg,n to doy ^^ In his mature years we find him 
deprecating excessive praise of Caesar, on the 
ground that he subverted a " free government," ®^ 
and in one of the very rare passages in which he 
betrays any enthusiasm, the inspiring subject is 
^' the idea that the infinitesimal calculus is a con- 
ception analogous to the corpuscular hypothesis 
in physics." ^^ 

But it must be admitted that the amount of know- 
ledge which the youthful Mill acquired by the process 
was surprising. In spite of the demands made on 
his time by his father, who did not scruple on one 
occasion to make him read through twenty-one 
years' numbers of the Edinburgh Review for the 
paternal benefit, he succeeded in amassing a store 
of learning which made him a most formidable 
disputant in the debating societies to which he soon 
ardently attached himself. His character at this 
time is a strange mixture of self-confidence and 
humilit}^ ; he has an academic positiveness, combined 

89 Autobiography, p. 37. 

9" Conite and Positivism, p. 190. He has, of course, the 
precedent ot Milton, but Milton is writing an avowed polemic, 
and seems to apologize for the argument. 

9^ Ibid., p. 194. 



iio TJionias Carlylc and foJni Stuart Mill, 

with a strong conviction of the mediocrity of his 
natural gifts. 

In estimating the influences at work upon Mill's 
education, his visit to France must not be forgotten. 
It does not correspond exactly with Carlyle's intro- 
duction to German literature, for Mill was in no 
particular trouble of mind at the time, and seems to 
have begun the study of French rather as a duty than 
as a refuge from despair. But the impression made 
upon him by French thought and modes of life was 
profound. It was from France that he afterwards 
drew his inspiration, and the contrast pictured in the 
Autohiograpliy^^'^ between the intellectual conditions 
of France and England is by no means flattering to 
the latter country. In the year 182 1, as has been 
noted, he made acquaintance with the great work of 
Bentham, and was entirely overcome by it. About 
this time, too, he was much in the society of the 
patriarch himself, so that, notwithstanding his 
anxiety''"' to disclaim the reputation of a Benthamite, 
we must take leave to doubt the complete inde- 
pendence of views which corresponded so strikingly 
with those of the author of the Traitc's dc Lc'g/s/a- 
tion. In 1823 Mill entered the service of the East 
India Company, in which he remained thirty-five 
years. 

Just at this period Btntham was establishing 
the original IVestiuiiistcr Rcvitm', as the organ of 
those uncompromising Radicals who were dissatisfied 

^^ Atitobiography^ pp. 59, 60. 
'•'=* Ibid., p. 105. 



TJie Apostle of Benthamism. 1 1 1 

with tlie half-hearted tone of the Edinburgh. The 
appearance of the Westmmster will long be remem- 
bered as a literary event by the amusing outburst 
of indignation which shook the pages of the great 
critical organ when it found the tables turned upon 
it in a most audacious way. Not content with 
expressing opinions opposed to those of the Whig 
n^gazine, the founders of the Westminster went to 
the length of publishing a scathing criticism from 
the pen of James Mill upon the whole career of the 
Edinburgh. It was on this occasion that Mill per- 
formed the office of literary scavenger to his father, 
by reading through the twenty-one volumes of the 
Edinburgh which had by that time appeared. 

In the pages of the new magazine Mill began to 
attempt the reformation of the world on the lines 
of Bentham. He appears to have thought that a 
persistent application of logic would convince people 
that the prejudices which they had inherited from 
their forefathers ought to be immediately discarded. 
His ambition was, at least mainly, intellectual. 
" While fully recognizing the superior excellence of 
unselfish benevolence and love of justice, we did not 
expect the regeneration of mankind from any direct 
action en those sentiments, but from the effect of 
educated intellect enlightening the selfish feelings." "' 
And again, " My zeal was as yet little else, at that 
period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions." "'' 
The immediate application which was to be made 

'" Autobiography^ p. iii. 
'^•' Ibid., p. loy. 



112 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

of the teachings of the new apostles was the deve- 
lopment of representative government, and the pro- 
motion of unlimited freedom of discussion. ^"^ It was, 
perhaps, rather a scanty foundation upon which to 
build a regenerated society, but it seemed sufficient 
to its supporters at the time. 

Meanwhile Mill had worn off a little of his 
aloofness by joining, or rather forming, one or two 
societies for the discussion of various questions, and 
had thus lost somewhat of the pedantry which, as he 
himself confesses, distinguished his earliest efforts. 

These occupations and objects carried him on with 
apparent satisfaction till his twenty-first year. Then 
occurred that crisis in his mental history which is so 
well described in the fifth chapter of the Autobio- 
graphy^ and which . really decided the direction of 
his life. He fell into a state of extreme depression, 
partly mental, partly physical, induced, probably, by 
overwork. Those who have had any experience of 
the distressing effects of nervous exhaustion will be 
able to sympathize with Mill. The illness, for such 
it really is, usually proceeds entirely from physical 
causes, but with a cruel caprice generally expends 
its chief force on the mind, leaving the body, to all 
appearance, untouched. The mind's eye becomes 
hopelessly distorted, every object is seen in its 
worst possible light, mankind in general appear to 
be hovering on the brink of the grave, every post 
seems to bring the news of a friend's death, the 
smallest spot on the skin is an incipient cancer, and 
^^ Autobiography, p. io6. 



TJie Apostle of Benthamism. 1 1 3 

a feeling of the general futility of all things takes 
possession of the sufferer. The precise form in 
which the attack came to Mill is best described 
in his own words. '' In this frame of mind it 
occurred to me to put the question directly to 
myself: 'Suppose that all your objects in life were 
realized ; that all the changes in institutions and 
opinions which you are looking forward to could be 
completely effected at this very instant, would this 
be a great joy and happiness to you ? ' And an 
irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 
< No.' " '^^ This answer plunged him into despair. 
He had no friends in whom to confide ; according 
to all his previous beliefs he had been furnished 
completely with armour against such a miserable 
catastrophe as this, and yet he had failed ignomini- 
ously. The machinery was all in perfect working 
order, but there was no work to be done. '' I was 
thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the com- 
mencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship 
and rudder, but no sail." '^^ 

Not only had his philosophy failed in bringing 
him, or allowing him to fall, into this condition ; it 
now proved entirely unable to extricate him. The 
deliverance came in a wholly unscientific way. 
Instead of proving to himself by a correct process of 
reasoning that his condition was absurd, and that 
there was no foundation for his dissatisfaction, — 
in fact, demonstrating that it did not exist,— Mill 

^'^ Autobiography, p. 134. 
^^ Ibid., p. 139. 



1 1 4 TJionias Carlylc and John Stuart Jllill. 

continued to lie helpless till a sudden flash of 
insight stirred the darkness. " I was reading, 
accidentally, Marmontel's Me moires^ and came to 
the passage which relates his father's death, the 
distressed position of the family, and the sudden 
inspiration by wliich he, then a mere bo}^, felt and 
made them feel that he would be everything to them 
— would supply the place of all that they had lost. 
A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came 
over me, and I was moved to tears. From this 
moment my burden grew lighter." "'' It seemed that 
deep below that artificial mass of learning there was 
a human heart after all, which refused to be satisfied 
with the pursuit of its own happiness. " The only 
chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end 
external to it, as the purpose of life." ^^ Moreover, 
he had come to see that humanity was not solely 
composed of intellectual faculties. " 1 ceased to 
attach almost exclusive importance to tlie ordering 
of outward circumstances, and the training of the 
human being for speculation and action." '^^^ He 
found that man had a soul as well as a brain, and 
that spiritual culture was the necessary counterpart 
of intellectual gymnastics. 

In both points, then, in the nature of the relief 
and the way in which it came. Mill's philosophy had 
received a severe shock. The answer to his difficulties 
had been, not some supremely ingenious triumph of 
mental science, whereby the enemy was frightened 

•'•* Autohioo;rap]n\ p. 140. ^^^^ Ih'uL, p. 143. 

1^" Ibid., p." 142. ' 



The Apostle of Benlhainism. 1 1 5 

off" for ever, but the command to turn his eyes away 
from study of himself to the contemplation of a great 
moral object. And this answer had not been the 
result of a carefully worked out scientific process, 
but liad come by a flash of intuition. No wonder 
that Mill felt his confidence in his " system" shaken — 
in fact, that he renounced it as a system altogether, 
and substituted for it " a conviction that the true 
system was something much more complex and 
many-sided than I had previously had any idea of, 
and that its office was to supply, not a set of model 
institutions, but principles from which the institu- 
tions suitable to any given circumstances might be 
deduced." ^^^ He found that Coleridge and Words- 
worth, and even Shelley, were as necessary as 
Hartley and Condillac, and it is characteristic of the 
circle in which he had previously moved that, though 
the most peaceable of men, he was obliged, by this 
conclusion, to break with one at least of its 
members.*"' He became aware of a wider range 
of sympathies in the men whose acquaintance he 
now made, and it is probably to the happy issue 
of this crisis that we owe that broad appreciation 
of all the sides of a vexed question which so 
honourably distinguishes Mill's writings. One of 
the acquaintanceships which he made about this 
time claims our special attention, for the other 
party to the relation was no less a person than 
Thomas Carlyle. 

'"^ Autobiography^ p. i6i. 
J'« IbUL, p. 1 50. 



1 1 6 Thonms Carlyle and JoJui Stuart Mill. 

The friendship, for it amounted to friendship at 
one time, between Mill and Carlyle, is more fitly 
recorded in our account of the former than the latter, 
for while there is no evidence that the prophet of 
Craigenputtock was in any w^ay influenced by the 
disciple of Bentham, there is good reason to believe 
that, for a time at least, there was considerable 
influence the other way. One of Carlyle's vivid 
word-portraits gives us a good notion of Mill at this 
time. " A slender, rather tall and elegant youth, 
with small, clear, Roman-nosed face, two small, 
earnestly-smiling ey'es, modest, remarkably gifted 
with precision of utterance, enthusiastic, yet lucid, 
calm ; not a great, yet distinctly a gifted and amiable 
youth." ^^^ It is essentially the same Mill as that 
depicted for us in the statue on the Thames 
Embankment. 

The circumstance which brought the two together 
was the appearance, in the Examiner of 183 1, of 
a series of articles by Mill entitled The Spirit of 
the Age. Some expressions respecting the ultimate 
end of political institutions, as the discovery of the 
best and wisest men in a nation, led Carlyle to 
exclaim, *' Here is a new Mystic," and, in spite of 
Mill's disclaimer, he persisted for some time in the 
opinion. At first the poetical form in which Carlyle's 
teaching was embodied hid its real value from the 
scientific mind of Mill, but after his mental attitude 
changed he received the message eagerly, not, how- 
ever, " as philosophy to instruct, but as poetry to 
^^^^ First Fo)i}\ vol. ii., p. 190. 



The Apostle of Benthamism, 1 1 7 

animate." ^^^'* The estimate of his new friend formed 
by the younj^cr man is interesting, and puts with 
admirable clearness what isperhaj^s the true relation- 
ship between the two. 

" J (lid not, however, flctm myself a competent judge of 
Carlylf*. I fe-lt that he was a f)0(;t, and that I was not; that 
h(; was a man f;f intuition, which I was not ; and that as such, 
ii^; not only saw many thin^^s long before me, which I could 
(jnly when they were pointed out to me, hobble after and 
prove, but that it was hi^fily proj>able he could see many 
things which were not visibht to me <-.ven after they were 
point'td out. I kn«-.w that 1 cf)uld not see round him, and 
cf;uld never be certain that I saw over him ; and 1 \\('.\('.x pro 
sumed to judge him with any d<-fiiiiteness, until he was inter- 
preted to me by onr; greatly the superior of us both — who was 
more a poet than he, and more a thinker than 1 — whose nature 
inchided his, and infinitely more." ""' 

This exceptionally gifted person was probably 
Mrs. Taylor. 

At first Mill w^as entirely overcome by the superior 
genius of his friend, as he had once been by the 
genius of Bentham. He entered upon a long cor- 
respondence after Carlyle's return to Scotland in 
1832, and we- cannot but regret that the letters of 
this period, which would throw so much light upon 
the relationship of two such striking figures, should 
be unattainable by tlie outside pubfic. Mr. Froude 
seems to hint that although Carlyle's part of the 
correspondence is lost for ever. Mill's letters may 
possibly some day be published. May it be so; and 
without commentary. 

i"'' Autohio^raphy, p. 175. 
»"« Ibid., p. 176. 



1 1 8 Thomas Carlyle and John Stitart Mill. 

A little incident which happened just after Carlyle's 
final settlement in London has become classical. 
Mill had borrowed the manuscript of the first 
volume of the French Revolution^ being ardently 
interested in the subject as well as the author. One 
evening he appeared at Cheyne Row, a ghastly 
picture of despair, to announce that through his 
carelessness the volume had been destroyed. The 
whole picture is very pathetic. Carlyle, though the 
loss was crushing, for he knew what it meant, 
heroicalty put himself aside, and did his best to 
comfort his agonized friend. The latter, with a 
want of tact which was all his life one of his fail- 
ings, sta3'cd for hours reiterating his apologies, poor 
Carlyle being only anxious on his own part to be 
alone with his wife, that they might have a good cry 
over the sorrow. At last Mill went, and after the 
door had closed the first words Carlyle said were, 
" Well, Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up ; we 
must endeavour to hide from him how very serious 
this business is to us." ^"'' After a piteous night he 
found resignation, and determined with indomitable 
resolution t^ begin the task again. The pecuniary 
loss — for Carlyle was within measurable distance of 
want — Mill honourably insisted on making good, 
much against his friend's wish ; but the mental and 
physical labour involved in a re-writing could only 
find its reward in the discipline which it aftbrded to 
Carlyle himself. 

Indeed, so close was the intimacy, that Mill at 
^^'' Scco7id Forty, vol. i., p. 28. 



The Apostle of Denthaniism. 119 

one time seems to have contemplated transferring 
a part of his exegetical powers from the writings of 
Bentham to those of Carlyle.^"^ It is impossible to 
speculate as to what would have been the result of a 
combination of such diverse qualities ; probably it 
was far better that Carlyle should be left, with all 
his obscurity, to speak for himself. 
• But the friendship was not to last. Mill believed 
himself to have done the French Revolution a 
substantial good by a well-timed and enthusiastic 
review of it in the Westminster ; and when Carlyle's 
pamphlet on Chartism was written, he offered, 
though the circumstances made the offer not too 
flattering, to let it appear in the final number of 
the same magazine. As time went on, however, it 
became evident that Mill's heart was still with 
Benthamism, and Carlyle's teaching grew too un- 
compromising to allow of its acceptance by orthodox 
Radicals. Upon the publication of The Nigger 
Question Mill openly declared war, in terms which 
Carlyle dismissed with curt contempt.'"^ Hencefor- 
ward the friendship was at an end. How far it 
ultimately influenced Mill's character • it is very 
difficult to say. We find, scattered up and down in 
his works, frequent references to Carlyle's teach- 
ing, but nearly always in a tone which seems to 
argue, at the least, considerable doubt as to its 
wisdom. The only event which can with safety be 
pronounced to have had a lasting effect upon Mill's 



'"^ Autobiography , p. 243. 
^"'■^ Second Forty, p. 28. 



I20 TJio))i(U Civlylc and JoIdi Shtar! Mil/. 

iiiiiul, .'iHt 1 llic |);i:.^.iiii; ol (he iiiciiImI crisis (l(\S('ril)('(l 
in \\\v lirdi clKiptcr of (he .1 tilohio^rn/^liy, is thai to 
wliicli we iiiiisl now ;illu(l(", liis ;i((|ii;iint;Mi('(' with 
Mrs. I'n.ylor. 

it is soincvvhnt of n vc\\c{ to fiinl (hat, notwith- 
staiuHni;' the ("haracd r of his early traiiiinj^', Mill 
was still eapal)l(> of liillinL; in love. When and how 
{\\c cailicr rccliiij; whirh he en(ert;iine(l lor the wife 
«>r liis friend passed into (he sdoni^ci" i)assioii which 
he aihnitted to hiinsell' alter the death k)[' her hus- 
band, is a |)S3'eholoi;ii\d ([nest ion whieh it woukl 
be liardly piolitahle to diseiiss. I'Vom the tone in 
whieh the relercMiees to her in the yliilohioi^m/iJiy 
are written, we nia\' infer that he was, at least alter 
her husband's death, in lo\c with her to tlu^ fullest 
(>\tent of the phr.ise. We have surniisiHl that she is 
(he person ti> whom he makers allusion as one ** who 
was more a poet than he" (Carlyle), " and more «i 
thinker than I." In ant)lher place he eomparis hei", 
in her eaiK da\s, to Shelley: "but in thon^ht and 
intelliH't, Slu Il(>y, so far as his poweis were deve- 
l(^pc(l in his short life, was but a child compared 
with what sh(> ultimately b(>canu\" "" With the 
example o^ ('(Muti^ belore us, we shall be cartful 
in ai-ceptini; thi^ te.-timony e\(ai o( a scientific 
philoso|iher, on such a subject, as literal criticism. 
Mrs. Taylor never jniblisluHl anythiui;' in hw own 
name ; we arc^ therefore unable to WW how far Mill's 
subsecjiuMit writings were inlhuMictHl, and in what 
diriu'tion, Im' this riaiiarkable coudMiialion o( Carlyle 



The Apostle of Benthaniiwi. i 2 i 

and Shelley, lint, with George Kliot for an instanre 
of woman's powers, wf- cannot assume that Mill's 
testimony is sr>lely due to the' intoxicating atmo- 
sphere of love. 

In 185 I Mill was made haj)|jy hy a marriaj:^e with 
Mrs. 'J'ayloi-, whom the death of liej' first hushand 
had set Wi-w In 1^58, upon the incori)oration of 
ffje government of India with the general adminis- 
tration of the State, he retired frr)m a service in 
which he had laboured faithfully for many yr-ars, 
with the most flattering expressions of approval. 
He had some tim(! before been able, to his satisfac- 
tir.n, " to indulge the inclination, natural to thinking 
persons when the age of boyish vanity is once 
past, for limiting my own society to a very few 
persons."'" lie now ]jre[jared, in furtherance of this 
resolution, to set off, in company with his wife, for a 
prolonged visit to the South of Europe. liut his 
hopes were cruelly frustrated by the death of his 
crjmpanion in the first winter of their travel. Hence- 
forward Avignon, the place of her burial, was his 
real home. lie bought a small property there, and, 
in the isolation to which his character had always 
tended, sat down, almost alone, to his literary 
labours. Once only did he emerge, for any 
lengthened period, from his retreat. In the year 
1865 he apj)eared like a spectre from the grave 
(for the general impression was that he had been 
some time deadj to take his seat as member for 
Westminster in the House of Commons. '\\m\ 
'" Autobiography^ \). 227. 



122 Thoinas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

manner of his election, and the conception he 
formed of his duties, are no less creditable to himself 
than to the electors who agreed to his terms. The 
request to stand came quite spontaneously, and Mill 
would only consent on the terms that he should do 
no personal canvassing, and should not be bound 
to represent the local interests of his constituency 
in the House. The scene in which he confessed, in 
the presence of a large meeting of working-men, to 
the charge of having imputed to the working classes 
that they were '' given to lying," is too well known 
to need description. But the passage in which he 
describes the plan which he followed during his three 
sessions is well worth quoting, as a silent criticism 
upon the motives which actuate the bulk of 
politicians. ''When I had gained the ear of the 
House . . . the idea I proceeded on was that when 
anything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently 
well done, by other people, there was no necessity 
for me to meddle with it." ^^^ But on subjects which 
few would incur the odium of dealing with, although 
their genuine principles should have led them that 
way. Mill stood up in unflinching advocacy of the 
Radical cause. 

As a matter of course he lost his seat at the next 
election, and turned back with perfect equanimity to 
his Avignonese seclusion. He remained, as he had 
long been, the inspirer and counsellor of the Radical 
party till his death in 1870. We have seen what 
was Mill's opinion of Carlyle. It will hardly do to 
^^^ Autobiography^ p. 284. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 123 

close this sketch of Mill's life without recording the 
final impression which he made upon the mind of his 
quondam friend, although the passage is one which 
exhibits Carlyle's characteristic fault of intolerance 
in its strongest light. 

"You have lost nothing by missing the Autobiography of 
Mill. I have never read a more uninteresting book, nor 1 
should say a sillier, by a man of sense, integrity, and serious- 
ness of mind. The penny-a-liners were very busy with it, 
I believe, for a week or two, but were evidently pausing in 
doubt and difficulty by the time the second edition came out. 
It is wholly the life of a logic-chopping engine, little more 
of human in it than if it had been done by a thing of 
mechanized iron. Autobiography of a steam-engine, perhaps, 
you may sometimes read it. As a mournful psychical curi- 
osity, but in no other point of view, can it interest anybod}^ 
I suppose it will deliver us henceforth from the cock-a-leerie 
crow about ' the Great Thinker of his Age.' Welcome, though 
inconsiderable ! The thought of poor Mill altogether, and of 
his life and history in this poor muddy world, give me real 
pain and sorrow." ^^^ 

Upon this estimate we shall take leave to differ 
from Carlyle. It may well have been that, to a man 
of his spiritual experience and insight, the record of 
Mill's life afforded no instruction. But to average 
mortals the history of a man of only ordinary 
abiHties, who has raised himself, by patient perse- 
verance and willingness to learn, to a position from 
which he can survey almost the whole continent of 
scientific knowledge, and draw from it such treasures 
as he firmly believes will be serviceable to his fellow- 
men, who affords an example of unwearied conscien- 

^13 Second Fo?i}', p. 420. 



124 Thomas Carlyle and Jo Jin Stuart Mill. 

tiousness such as few men have to show, who is, 
in all the relations of life, dutiful, affectionate, and 
sympathetic, — such a history will never be without 
value. 

II. 

We have now to consider what was the teaching 
of Mill, both generally upon the conduct of life, and, 
to a certain extent, specifically in its various depart- 
ments. In estimating the teaching of a man of 
science it would not be permissible for a writer who 
treats his subject from a literary point of view to 
enter into a discussion of the abstract soundness of 
scientific doctrines. It is rather his business to 
consider those doctrines in their relationship to life, 
and to endeavour to gauge their effect, actual and 
potential, upon the world. 

It is fairly clear, from expressions in his writings, 
that Mill regarded the state of a man's intellectual 
faculties as the key to his character.^^* If we have 
taken anything like a true view of Mill himself, the 
maxim, whether sound or not as a general rule, 
holds good in his case. The circumstances of his 
life show that on almost all occasions he was the 
slave of his intellectual convictions. It becomes, 
therefore, important to summarise these convictions. 
And it will be almost a matter of course to begin 



114 



Cf., e.g., Logic, bk. vi., c. xi., § 2, and Benthatn, 
"Dissertations and Discussions," vol. i., p. 357. "The first 
question in regard to any man of speculation is, what is his 
theory of human life ? " 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 125 

with his views upon the general system of the 
universe. 

The universe may be considered, according to the 
general consent of philosophers, under two apparently 
distinct aspects, variously expressed as the Internal 
and the External, the Ego and the Non-Ego, Mind 
and Matter. With regard to the external or material 
pcrrtion of the universe Mill accepted the psycho- 
logical theory, which, postulating a mind capable 
of expectation, and also certain well-known laws of 
association of ideas, explains matter as causes or 
groups of causes, producing or tending to produce 
sensations. '' Matter, then, may be defined a 
Permanent Possibility of Sensation. If I am asked 
whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the 
questioner accepts this view of it. If he does, I 
believe in matter : and so do all Berkeleians. In 
any other sense, than this I do not." ^^^ The 
determination of the transcendentalist philosophers 
to see behind the phenomena of matter, a province of 
noumena, to which phenomena owe their existence, 
Mill regarded as nothing more than a conclusion 
induced, through the powerful influence of associa- 
tion, by a consideration of the law of causation. 

With regard to mind, Mill was much less sure. 
Memory was to him an ultimate, inexplicable fact ; 
but he inclined to the psychological view of mind 
as a series of sensations in some way unified by 
this inexplicable fact of memory.^^*^ As this Memory 

1^-^ Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy^ p. 233. 
116 Ibid., pp. 248, 251. 



126 Thomas Carlyle and John Shiart MilL 

may at any time reproduce past sensations without 
any apparent reference to the existing conditions of 
matter, a certain addition has to be made to com- 
plete the theory. Accordingly, mind is said to 
consist of a series of feelings, with a background 
of possibilities of feeling. To this theory Mill, 
though he expressly declines complete adherence 
to it, did clearly very strongly lean. 

With regard to man's position in this universe. 
Mill named himself a necessitarian, but a necessi- 
tarian who was nothing of a fatalist. The doctrine 
of necessity he regarded only as a form of state- 
ment of the law of causation. Given all the 
antecedents, the consequences could be unerringly 
predicted ; the reason why the law of causation 
was denied in connection with human conduct being, 
simply, that the antecedents were countless in 
number, and hard to discover. But in the causes 
of a particular action Mill by no means omitted 
to include the volitions of the individual, merely 
considering them as themselves part of a chain of 
causation. ''His" (a man's) ''character is formed 
by his circumstances (including among these his 
particular organization), but his own desire to 
mould it in a particular way is one of those 
circumstances, and by no means one of the least 
influential." ^^"^ And the peculiarity of this desire, 
that which gives it its significant position of 
individuahty, is that it is formed mainly by 

^""^ Logic, bk. vi., chap, i., §§2, 3; Sir William Ha?nilto?i's 
Philosophy^ c. xxvi. ; and Autobiography ^ p. 169. 



The Apostle of BenthaTnism. 127 

things exterior to the organization, viz., by expe- 
rience. 

Beyond this point Mill was an agnostic. Like 
his father, he " yielded to the conviction that, con- 
cerning the origin of things, nothing whatever can 
be known." ^^^ Through all his life he showed the 
utmost tenderness for those who built upon the 
belief of a divine agency as the creative force of 
the universe, provided that they did not make their 
belief the basis of a scientific polemic. On such 
occasions, of course, he felt bound to point out 
what he deemed the flaws in their process. But 
he never made any dogmatic assertion of atheism. 

It is not very difficult to see how this scientific 
creed translated itself into Mill's system of ethics. 
His belief was that man's existence consisted of 
sensations and possibilities of sensations. Regarded 
in their ultimate effects, sensations could be divided 
into two classes, pleasurable and painful, with, 
perhaps, a third class of indifferent. Not only 
did Mill believe that the true end of ethics w^as to 
maximise the amount of pleasurable sensations in 
the world, and to minimise that of the painful, but 
he believed also that this was the object which every 
man, so far as regarded his own case, consciously or 
unconsciously set before himself. The point to be 
noticed was, however, that few people avowed this 
object, the majority disguising it under forms which, 
for various reasons, they preferred to open acknow- 

^^s Autobiography^ p. 39. 



128 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

ledgment. And moreover some people were much 
wiser than others in the means adopted. 

" By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of 
pain ; by unhappiness, pain, and the absence of pleasure." ^^^ 

So far Mill is plain enough, but he is not quite so 
clear when he comes to the proof of his assertion 
that all men are really seeking happiness. 

"Questions about ends are, in other words, questions 
what things are desirable. ... In like manner, I apprehend, 
the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is 
desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end 
which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in 
theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing 
could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can 
be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that 
each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires 
his own happiness." ^^^ 

It must be painfully evident to anyone at all 
acquainted with the amenities of controversy that in 
these passages lie ample opportunities for the most 
unprofitable verbal wrangling. But in such a funda- 
mental matter it is allowable for a critic to make 
one or two observations, having due regard to the 
dangers ahead. 

Utilitarianism was written as a popular ex- 
position of the doctrine from which the work takes 
its name. It must be presumed therefore that the 
author intended his language to be understood in its 
ordinary, — not, where the two senses disagree, in 
its technical meaning. If this view be correct. Mill 

^^^ Utilita?ianism, p. lo. 
120 Ibid., pp. 52, 53. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 129 

appears to have overlooked the ambiguity to which 
his use of the word '' desirable " gives rise. Accord- 
ing to him, the thing desirable is that which is 
actually desired. But that is not the ordinary use of 
the term. A thing which is '' desirable " is not that 
which is desired, but that which ought to be desired. 
It is no more true, according to the ordinar}^ use 
of language, that " desirable " means *' that which 
is desired," than that '' considerable " means '' that 
which is considered." In each case the word, 
although it may have had originally a purely logical 
sense, has long since come, by a process of transition 
with which all philologists are familiar, to acquire an 
ethical, or, as Bentham would have said, a " deonto- 
logical" meaning. I admit that the introduction of 
the idea of ''ought" involves, the whole question of 
ethical philosophy, but the point is whether Mill was 
justified in quietly passing over all that question. 
As it stands, his assertion is purely dogmatic. 

Again, is it a fact that '' each person, so far as he 
believes it to be attainable, desires his own happi- 
ness " ? This question resolves itself into two : the 
question of object, and the question of quantity. In 
the first place, experience seems to contradict flatly 
the dictum that each person desires his own happi- 
ness. Putting aside the cases of those who deny 
the assertion with their lips, — which denial is as 
much entitled to be believed as any other testimony 
of human beings to their own mental condition, — we 
may look at the instances of those whose actions 
seem to contradict the theory. A sane person who 

9 



130 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

deliberately does an act which he knows to be 
inconsistent with his happiness, can hardly be said, 
in the ordinary use of language, to desire happiness. 
Take the case of Charlotte Corday. She conceived 
it to be her duty to assassinate Marat. She knew 
perfectly well that the immediate consequence of 
her act would be death by the guillotine. There is 
no evidence that she was leading an unhappy life 
before her resolution was taken, and there is very 
strong evidence that she had no belief in a future 
state in which compensation for loss of happiness 
in this world would be given. Yet she deliberately 
executed her purpose, and as deliberately awaited 
the consequences. On no theory, except a theory 
which begs the very question at issue, can she be 
accounted insane. If happiness be, as Mill defines 
it, "pleasure and the absence of pain," Charlotte 
Corday did not desire happiness. 

But if it be said that men desire happiness only 
so far as the feeling is not counterbalanced by some 
alternative desire, then the limitation '' so far as he 
believes it to be attainable" is unmeaning. "Desire" 
is no longer an absolute, but a relative expression, 
representing only a conviction that a certain thing, 
would be pleasant if it could be had. There seems, 
however, no reason for limiting the feeling by the 
possibilities of the case. I may desire a thing very 
ardently, though I may know that I have not the 
slightest chance of attaining it. 

It must be carefully remembered that Mill did not, 
in his mature years, propose happiness, either of 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 131 

the individual or the community, as the conscious 
standard of action. This had been his view in the 
earlier days of his adhesion to Benthamism, but he 
discarded it before attaining his intellectual majority. 
Utility, by which famous term Mill means con- 
duciveness to happiness, is only to be the ultimate 
test to which doubtful questions are referred. 

" Those who adopt utility as a standard can seldom apply 
it truly except through the secondary principles ; those who 
reject it generally do no more than erect those secondary 
principles into first principles. It is when two or more of the 
secondary principles conflict, that a direct appeal to some 
first principle becomes necessary ; and then commences the 
practical importance of the utilitarian controversy ; which 
is, in other respects, a question of arrangement and logical 
subordination rather than of practice." ^^^ 

The " secondary principles " referred to in this 
passage are the intuitive ideas of justice, truth, right 
and wrong, mercy, revenge, by which the conduct of 
the average man is really governed. It does occur 
to me here to wonder whether the differences 
between the moral views of the two men who are 
the subject of this essay have not been greatly 
exaggerated. It was probably Carlyle's private 
opinion that the steady pursuit of the ends com- 
monly understood by the terms justice, right, truth, 
and such like, would in the long run lead to the 
happiness both of the individual and the race ; but 
if he entertained this view, it was as a speculation 
only, and his profound conviction of the mistake of 
making happiness the aim would lead him to sup- 

^21 Beniham^ "Dissertations," vol. i., p. 385. 



132 Thomas Carlyle and John Stua7^t Mill. 

press any such opinion, lest it might weaken his 
invective against the Benthamite doctrine. Mill, on 
the other hand, seems to admit that the ordinary 
intuitive process by which men shape their lives 
does, in healthy cases, tend towards an unconscious 
pursuit of utility ; but his deep distrust of the in- 
tuitive process led him to exaggerate the importance 
of a T^ko^ which, in his view, could be attained 
only by experimental methods. But it must be 
admitted that on one point, the famous doctrine of 
Entsagen, the difference seems irreconcilable. Mill 
could not appreciate renunciation unless it resulted, 
or at least was intended to result, in the happines'g 
of others. " All honour to those who can abnegate 
for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when 
by such renunciation they contribute worthily to 
increase the amount of happiness in the world ; but 
he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other 
purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than 
the ascetic mounted on his pillar." ^^^ Whether or 
not Carlyle regarded renunciation as an act to be 
^' admired," is a difficult question to answer ; but it 
. is quite clear from the passage in Sartor that he 
looked upon it as the beginning of the higher life, 
quite apart from any considerations of happiness. 

It is worth while noticing that a few years before 
the publication of Utilitarianism Mill seems to 
have been attracted to another formula as an ex- 
pression of the final aim of conduct. This was the 
celebrated maxim of Wilhelm von Humboldt, that 
^22 Utilitarianism, p. 23. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 133 

'' the end of man, or that which is prescribed by 
the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, is the 
highest and most harmonious development of his 
powers to a complete and consistent whole." ^^^ This 
maxim was, however, ultimately discarded for the 
older standard, though it was destined to be natural- 
ized in England by another foster-father. Readers 
of Mr. Matthew Arnold's prose works will have no 
difficulty in tracing its presence. 

Meanwhile, however, it is necessary to remark 
that Mill gives a very wide as well as lofty meaning 
to the word " pleasure," considered as the founda- 
tion of happiness. In addition to the admitted 
stomachic or animal pleasures, there are the plea- 
sures to be derived from a contemplation of *' the 
objects of nature, the achievements of art, the 
imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the 
ways of mankind past and present, and their pro- 
spects in the future." ^^* And the happiness kept in 
mind by the utihtarian is not his own, but the 
general happiness. " I must again repeat, what the 
assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice 
to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the 
utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct 
is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all 
concerned." ^^^ Unfortunate^, however. Mill does 
not appear to resolve a very elementary difficulty 
on this point, which presents itself as an insuperable 
barrier to the understanding of the " Greatest 

^^^ Liberty, p. 33. ^^^ Ibid.y p. 24. 

^^^ Utilitarianism^ p. 20. 



134 Thomas Carlyle and John Shear t Mill. 

Happiness" principle by the ordinary mind. 
" Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number." 
Yes, but suppose there is a question between the 
happiness and the number. Of two alternative 
acts, let one produce x happiness divided amongst 
six people, and the other 2x happiness divided 
amongst four people. Which is to be preferred, 
on the utilitarian principle ? I am the proprietor 
of two theatres, one of which holds two hundred 
people, the other five hundred. In the former only 
does the law" allow me to provide free entertain- 
ments. It is a question whether I am to give a 
free performance in the small theatre to two hun- 
dred charity children, to each of whom the amount 
of happiness afforded would be infinitely greater 
than that derived by an ordinary paying theatre- 
goer from the same performance ; or whether, by 
playing in the larger theatre, I shall afford pleasure 
to five hundred persons instead of two hundred. 
It may be that, measured by Bentham's Table, the 
gross amount of pleasure will be greater in the 
former case, which will accordingly produce the 
Greatest Happiness, but the alternative gives happi- 
ness to the Greatest Number. Which is to be 
preferred ? 

So much for Mill's teleology. We must now look 
at the means by which the desired end was to be 
won. 

In one place Mill asserts that a happy life would 
be attainable by the majority of mankind but for two 
obstacles. "The present wretched education, and 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 135 

wretched social arrangements, are the only real hin- 
drance to its being attainable by almost all."^^'' It may 
then be deemed fairly evident that he considered the 
improvement of education and the reform of social 
arrangements to be indispensable means towards 
the desired end. And in another place he points 
towards the progress of physical science as the 
general means by which the object is to be gained. ^^''^ 
We may therefore with fairness assume that in his 
view it was to the general pursuit of science, mental 
and physical, that the energies of mankind should 
be turned. Undoubtedly he does elsewhere insist, 
theoretically, upon the duty of cultivating the moral 
and aesthetic, as well as the scientific faculties, but 
the whole tenor of his life and writings goes to show 
that it was to the latter that he almost entirely 
devoted himself. It is very instructive to look at the 
speech delivered by Mill as Rector of St. Andrew's, 
just a year after Carlyle's famous appearance at 
Edinburgh. Carlyle had spoken a few simple words, 
urging the cultivation of noble and manly qualities ; 
Mill takes his hearers over the whole field of learning, 
examining its furrows one by one, suggesting im- 
provements here and there, pointing out the uses of 
this and that, but apparently with little heed to that 
to which all culture ought to be subordinate, the 
progress in dignity and completeness of man himself. 
The special danger of such a philosophy as Mill's is 
that it becomes absorbed in the means and forgets 
the end. 

^^'^ Utilitarianism^ p. 19. ^^^ Ibid.y p. '22. 



136 TJiomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

With regard to the method to be used for acquiring 
this beneficial knowledge Mill was very positive. 
He was a firm adherent of the experimental school, 
to which of course his venerated leader, Bentham, 
belonged. Intuitions Mill regarded as the results of 
previous experience, consolidated and petrified by the 
working of the laws of association, — in fact, as in- 
ductions framed when the means for framing sound 
inductions were less available than in the present 
time. '' The notion that truths external to the 
mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, 
independently of observation and experience, is, I 
am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual 
support of false doctrines and false institutions." ^^^ 
And in the St. Andrew's speech he took special care 
to warn his hearers against being "led away by talk 
about inarticulate giants who do great deeds without 
knowing how, and see into the most recondite truths 
without any of the ordinary helps, and without being 
able to explain to other people how they reach their 
conclusions, nor consequently to convince any other 
people of the truth of them." ^'^ He wrote a long and 
careful book against the acknowledged head of the 
philosophic nituitional school, Sir William Hamilton, 
and may without doubt be considered as adhering 
strictly to the last to his position. Yet there are one 



^^^ Autobiography^ p. 225, and cf. Comte and Posiiivis?n, 
p. 72. 

^^ Inaugural Address, p. 27, and cf. also, p. 22: — "There 
are but two roads by which truth can be discovered, observa- 
tion and reasoning." 



The Apostle of Benthamisin. 137 

or two passages in his works which seem to show an 
appreciation of the vakie of intuition. " In scientific 
investigation, as in all other works of human skilly 
the way of obtaining the end is seen as it were 
instinctively by superior minds in some comparatively 
simple case, and is then, by judicious generalisation, 
adapted to a variety of complex cases." ^^*^ As a 
matter of fact, discoveries are nearly always made that 
way. Kant himself has admitted the inability of 
pure reason to discover truth. And it is somewhat 
strange that Mill should not have seen that his own 
view of intuitions, as the spontaneous development 
of long courses of experience, was consistent with, 
nay, almost necessarily involved, a very high appre- 
ciation of their value. This obvious criticism has, 
of course, been suggested by Mr. Herbert Spencer.^^^ 
But with regard to the methods of experimental 
treatment. Mill made a great advance on the merely 
empirical and analytical system of Bentham. Perhaps 
the most suggestive and valuable part of his Logic is 
that in which he urges that the investigation of mental 
and physical phenomena should be carried on by a 
double process. The law is evolved by a deduction 
from the fundamental laws of mind and matter 
already known, and it is then to be verified by a 
rigorous application of induction to the results of 
observation and experiment. Or the process may 
be conducted in the inverse order. In the science 
of history, for instance, the science which treats of 

^^'* Logic , book vi., cap. i., § I. 

131 Data of Ethics, ed. 1879, P- 123. 



138 Thomas Cmdyle and John Stuart Mill, 

the development of communities of men, it is useless 

to make shallow generalisations from empirical 

observation of events. These generalisations must 
• 

be shown to coincide with the laws of ethology, with 
the fundamental development of human character, 
before they can claim to be looked upon as any- 
thing more than accidents. '' Accordingly the most 
erroneous generalisations are continuously made 
from the course of history : not only in this country, 
where history cannot yet be said to be at all culti- 
vated as a science, but in other countries where it is 
so cultivated, and by persons well versed in it. The 
only check or corrective is constant verification by 
psychological and ethological laws." "^ 

The fundamental laws upon which all the de- 
ductive sciences are based Mill appears to allow 
were originally the result of simple intuition, ^^^ but 
he in one place lays it down, rather dogmatically, 
that ''nearly all the thoughts which can be reached, 
by mere strength of original faculties, have long 
since been arrived at."^^'^ This proposition seems to 
be somewhat of the same character with those 
which its author has elsewhere very wisely criticised, 
to the effect that we cannot for the future expect any 
great original productions in poetry and music. 

Finally, we may notice one piece of advice which 
Mill gave to the St. Andrew's students, as stamping 
definitely the whole character of his method, and 

^^2 Logic, book vi., cap. x., § 4. 
13^ Subjection of Women, p. 1 34. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 139 

pointing out clearly the limits which that method 
inevitably set to his range of thought. " If yoii want 
to knoiv whether you are thinking rightly, put your 
thought into words." ^^'' No single sentence could 
show Mill's position more clearly than this, nor more 
clearly mark him off from the other thinker with 
whom this essay deals. The bent of his mind was 
wholly logical, and logic is not creative, but explana- 
tory. Notwithstanding Mill's heroic attempt to claim 
for ratiocination the power of making discoveries,^^^ it 
appears probable that he can only succeed by limiting 
the meaning of the term '' discovery " to results which 
lie only just beyond the border line of existing know- 
ledge. It may possibly be that intuition is really a 
lightning process of inference, but though differing 
thus only in degree, it is clearly distinguishable by 
every one from the process of ratiocination, still 
more from that part of ratiocination which con- 
sists of pure syllogisms. Logic is admirable as a 
testing-instrument, but it requires continually to be 
brought up to the level of new discoveries. It is 
the second thing, but not the first. It is the mis- 
tress of science, but the handmaid of art ; and art 
came before science. 

It is impossible to give more than a glance 
at the details of the work which Mill did in the 
field of science. His productions are invariably 
characterised by three prominent features. They 
are distinguished, first, by the close relationship which 



^^^ Inaugural Address, p. 27. 
13^ Logic, book ii., cap. iii., § 2. 



1 40 Thomas Carlyle and Johi Stuart Mill. 

they bear to actual life. In illustration no less than 
in application the author shows an appreciation of 
the conditions of life as a whole which renders his 
works, even to the non-scientific reader, a continual 
source of interest. It is a tradition of economists 
that Mill once contemplated constructing his famous 
work upon the principle of the '' economic man," i.e., 
by figuring to himself a being possessed of but 
one positive impulse, the desire of making money, 
and one negative quality, laziness ; intending, after 
working out his conclusions upon this basis, to 
render them practical by making various allowances 
for the complex conditions of human nature. But 
his wide knowledge of the allowances which would 
have to be made led him to abandon the scheme, 
with the result that the work as we now have it is 
one of the most human and vital productions on the 
difficult subject of political economy. 

Again, we notice in Mill's works a singular fear- 
lessness in the application of principles. In his 
juvenile days he had once in his father's company 
made use of the very common expression that some- 
thing was true in theory but false in practice. ^^'^ 
The outburst of paternal wrath which followed the 
utterance of this fallacy by a boy of twelve seems to 
have sunk deep into his mind, and though the picture 
of the wretched youth striving to evolve a definition 
of theory, and the angry father upbraiding him for 
his "unparalleled ignorance," may provoke mingled 
feelings of mirth and indignation, there can be no 
^^^ Autobiography, p. 32. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 141 

doubt that the world owes a great deal to the elder 
Mill's severity. There is very little chance of an 
unsound principle hiding its weakness from the 
eye of a thinker who pursues its application to the 
very utmost limits of practice, and, when he has 
once accepted it, relies upon it absolutely in his 
future speculations. 

Thirdly, the feature of patience is very strongly 
noticeable in Mill's vv^ritings. We know by his 
Autobiography that many of them occupied years in 
composition, were read and re-read, and always re- 
written, that they might finally be the result of his 
maturest thought. To this quality Mill himself 
attached the highest importance. 

" It was through them " {i.e.^ the meetings at Grote's house) 
"that I acquired, or very much strengthened, a mental habit 
to which I attribute all that I have ever done, or ever shall do, 
in speculation ; that of never accepting half-solutions of diffi- 
culties as complete ; never abandoning a puzzle, but again and 
again returning to it until it was cleared up ; never allowing 
obscure corners of it to remain unexplored, because they did 
not appear important ; never thinking that I properly under- 
stood any part of a subject until I understood the whole.^^ 

And all readers of Mill's books can bear ample 
testimony to the impression of security which the 
evidence of this care makes upon them. 

To turn, however, to our short view of the works 
themselves. Mill's labours were concerned princi- 
pally with three departments of speculation — politics, 
pohtical economy, and logic. With the first of these his 
name is for ever identified as an unflinching champion 

^^^ Autobiography^ p. 123. 



142 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

of the doctrine of laissez-faire , and as an earnest but 
conscientious advocate of representative government. 
With regard to the object of the state, and consequently 
the Hmit of state authority, he has spoken clearly in 
that which he has himself described as the most 
carefully composed and sedulously corrected of his 
writings ^^^ — the essay On Liberty. He has there laid 
it down that "the sole end for which mankind are 
warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering 
with the liberty of action of any of their number, is 
self-protection." ^**^ This principle Mill applied only 
to societies in a certain stage of development, not 
perhaps exactly defined, but which would in his view 
undoubtedly have included all European countries 
at the present day, except, possibly, Spain. With 
regard to these countries. Mill held firmly to the 
conviction that each individual was the best judge of 
his own interests, and, apparently, did not accept the 
view that the misery of a large part of the community 
is of itself, apart from its ultimate consequences, an 
evil from which the remainder ought to be protected. 
The state of affairs contemplated by the advocates 
of the laissez-faire principle was briefly defined by 
Carlyle as '' Anarchy plus a street constable." "^ 

It must, however, be noticed that in the fifth book 
of his Political Economy Mill gives a rather wide 
scope to the idea of self-protection, so far relaxing 
the strictness of laissez-faire as to permit of the 

^^^ Autobiography, p. 250. 

^^^ Liberty, p. 6. 

^^^ Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 17. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 143 

regulation by Government of education, perpetual 
contracts, colonization, and scientific experiment.^*^ 
The Political Economy was written eleven years 
before the essay On Liberty ; but whether the 
author meant, in his later expression, to modify 
his former views, is rather a difficult question to 
answer. 

With regard to the means by which the object of 
the state was to be realized, Mill's main plan was 
to advocate the maintenance and improvement of 
representative government. The outlines of the 
system had been sketched by Bentham many years 
before, and elaborated by James Mill in his Essay on 
Government. The improvements suggested by Mill 
himself seem to be connected by the thread of a 
purpose which runs through them all — the improve- 
ment of the moral tone of the community, and, 
thereby, of the government. Towards this object 
was directed his uncompromising hostility to the 
introduction of the ballot, to the ''delegate" theory, 
to the placing of unlimited power in the hands of 
majorities. In these three articles he was of course 
opposed to the orthodox Radicals of the day. The 
ballot was included in the famous '' Six Points " of 
the Charter, it was persistently advocated by the 
most energetic of the Radical leaders, and was, as 
every one knows, eventually carried. Mill's treatment 
of the question is characteristic of his thoroughness. 
He points out the inconsistency of giving a man a 
vote on the ground that he is fitted to use it for 
^^^ Political Economy, book v., vol. ii,, pp. 576 — end. 



144 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

honourable purposes, and then allowing him to 
employ a method of voting which affords scope for 
unlimited indulgence of unworthy motives. He saw 
that the conditions under which a tenant or workman 
required protection against his landlord or employer, 
other than the protection afforded by the possession 
of the vote itself, were rapidly passing away. Even 
in i860 a good tenant was far too valuable to be 
ejected on political grounds. Mill saw too that the 
ballot gave room for still worse bribery than the 
open system, by making it possible for the elector 
to accept bribes from both parties. And he dreaded 
the moral effect of the institution upon the electors. ^"^^ 
How true his forebodings have proved will be pointed 
out further on. 

In the second point he was also opposed to that 
powerful section of the Radical party of which Mr. 
Bright was the spokesman. It was the contention 
of this school that members were sent to Parliament 
to register the votes of their constituents, that is, of 
the majority, or supposed majority, of them. This 
theory, if carried out, would simply place the 
government of the country in the hands of those 
least fitted to wield it, in the great mass of the 
uninstructed. In other words, it would involve the 
government of the wise by the ignorant. Mill's 
view of the duties of an electorate was that it 
was to choose its governors, not to govern. For 
a recognition of honesty and abilit}^ little education 
is required, but to judge of the competing merits of 
1^3 Representative Governme7it, cap. x. 



The Apostle of Benthamism, 145 

two or more rival policies a man must possess special 
skill and knowledge. 

Upon the subject of minorities, Mill held firmly to 
the view that a government which merely represents 
the views of a majority is not a truly representative 
government/** is, in fact, a class-government with a 
colour of democracy in it. The means he proposed 
for securing the effective representation of minorities 
were, principally, a cumulative vote for persons of 
superior education, and a scheme, something like 
that developed by Mr. Hare, for a system of non- 
local constituencies. 

It seems to me that this thread of improvement in 
the moral tone of democracies is also the link by 
which to connect Mill's advocacy of the political 
claims of women with the rest of his philosophy. 
Doubtless his mind was ardently affected by what 
seemed to him a flagrant example of cruel injustice. 
His famous essay on The Subjection of Women is 
animated by a tone far warmer than that which usually 
marks his writings. He believed that the differences 
in the legal positions of men and women were the 
occasion of grievous practical suffering to all women, 
but more especially to those whose circumstances 
required them to support themselves by the exercise 
of their business abilities. The peculiar composition 
of Mill's nature, and his purely intellectual conception 
of justice, may possibly have inclined him to take an 
exaggerated view of the case ; certainly it seems hard 
for any one who considers the conditions of modern 
^^ Representative Gover7tment, p. 133. 

10 



146 Thomas Carlyle mid John Stuart Mill, 

politics to get up a very strong feeling of wrong at 
being excluded from the franchise. 

But in his treatise Mill also lays great stress on 
the moral influences which would in his view flow 
from the equalisation of the conditions of the sexes. 
The existing differences he considers to be harmful 
in their operation upon the characters of men and 
women, depriving society at large of an immense 
amount of intellectual and moral force, producing a 
totally false impression with regard to the actual 
capabilities of either sex, and hindering the natural 
gravitation of faculties towards their suitable occupa- 
tions. Notwithstanding these social considerations, 
the author of the essay, throughout what is evidently 
an exceptionally deliberate work, shows himself to be 
a thorough individualist, and the point in which his 
arguments appear to be weakest is on the question 
of the social necessity of maintaining unequal, or, 
at any rate, dissimilar conditions. The only other 
criticism which it seems necessary to make here is, 
that in tracing the origin and growth of the existing 
arrangements,^^^ Mill does not appear to have been 
aware of the primitive polyandrous states of society, 
which have since been explained by various writers 
on the subject of sociology, as, for instance, by Mr. 
McLennan. It ought to be noticed that in the Auto- 
biography^^^ Mill expressly claims to have held the 
substance of the view developed in The Subjection 
of Women before becoming acquainted with Mrs. 

^^^ Subjectioji of Wo7nen, pp. 8, 9. 
^^^ Autobiogi^aphy, p. 244, note. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 147 

Taylor, though he admits his indebtedness to her 
for the working out of the principle. The article 
published in Mill's name in the Westminster Review 
of July 185 1, upon the same subject, is avowedly the 
work of Mrs. Taylor. ^'^ 

The object which Mill set before himself in the 
Political Economy is clearly stated in the preface 
to the book. The treatise of Adam Smith, the 
foundation of modern English political economy, 
had been a work dealing with its special subject 
as a branch of general social philosophy ; its pages 
were filled with matter which did not strictly belong 
to economic science, but which bore more or less 
directly upon it. In one place, for instance, Adam 
Smith diverges into a history of European education. 

The work had both gained and lost by this method. 
Mr. Bagehot has pointed out^-^ the fact that of the 
two greatest English writers on political economy 
before Mill, the one, Adam Smith, who as an 
university professor and man of theory might 
have been expected to have dealt with his subject 
in an abstract way, has in fact given us a work 
abounding in happy illustration from past and 
present circumstances, and full of practical detail ; 
while Ricardo, the man of business and member of 
Parliament, has produced a book almost repulsive 
in its scientific hardness and remoteness from life. 
Business men, the practitioners of political economy, 
read Adam Smith, but will not read Ricardo. 

^^^ Dissertations and Discussions^ vol. ii., p. 411. 
^^^ Eco?iomic Studies, ed. 1880, p. 151. 



148 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart MilL 

But if Adam Smith's work gains in popularity 
by the method adopted, it loses in scientific value. 
The multitude of allusions and details encumber 
the mind of the author, and prevent him working 
out his principles to their full extent. Accordingly, 
as a scientific work, his book had become in many 
points obsolete by Mill's time, though it will never 
lose its historical interest. 

It was Mill's object to produce a work which 
should combine the practicality of the Wealth of 
Nations with the correcter scientific matter of the 
later writers. There can be no doubt that he has 
succeeded admirably. The Political Economy is 
a work full of interest for every intelligent reader, 
economist or not. The frequent applications of 
principle to existing circumstances, not merely by 
way of illustration, but as part of the original 
scheme, prevent anything like a feeling of difficulty 
arising in the mind of the reader, except perhaps in 
some of the more abstruse chapters on the subject 
of money. The amount of knowledge on auxiliary 
subjects displayed is so great as to give the work a 
secondary value distinct from its primary importance. 

On the other hand, by the testimony of universal 
respect among those best qualified to judge, the 
scientific value of the Political Economy is equal 
to its attractiveness. Mill did not claim originality 
for his matter ; the principal merit of his work is the 
admirable skill with which the conclusions of others 
are woven together, and the result stated with 
scientific accuracy and yet with literary clearness 



The Apostle of Benthamism, 149 

and grace. It is needless to say, in speaking of a 
scientific work which has attained its fortieth year, 
that its doctrines are here and there subjected to 
criticism. For instance, the importance which Mill 
attached to the subject of the distribution of wealth 
is now generally considered to belong more properly 
^to that of consumption. And Mill's theory of the 
wages fund, a theory which was probably in- 
fluenced largely by his appreciation of Malthusian- 
ism, has been of late severely criticized, in a popular 
form by Mr. Henry George, and in a scientific spirit 
by Professor Walker. Nevertheless, the work 
remains still a standard guide to the subject ; every 
English student is advised by his teachers to read 
it thoroughly, and the latest authority pronounces 
that the somewhat sweeping criticisms propounded 
by more modern economists, such as Professor 
Cairnes and Mr. Stanley Jevons, are not on the 
whole justified. 

Lastly, we come to Mill's labours on the subject 
of logic. It is in this field, perhaps, that he shows 
to best advantage ; the nature of the topic is cal- 
culated to draw out to the utmost his unrivalled 
patience and power of abstraction, his searching 
self-examination and distrust of generalities. The 
greater part of his well-known treatise is a sum- 
mary, complete and critical, of the labours of his 
predecessors, and exhibits the same features which 
have been noticed in the consideration of the 
Political Economy. But the theory of the syllo- 
gism in the second book is a contribution of an 



150 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

original kind, and though it seems to fail in leading 
to the conclusion which its author propounds, it is, 
apart from that consideration, a discovery of great 
interest and value. 

It is in the last book, however, of the Logic 
that the author shows the real powers of his mind. 
It has been suggested that this book forms the most 
valuable part of the work. It may now be ques- 
tioned whether it is not the most valuable of all 
Mill's writings, the only point which detracts from 
its worth as an evidence of his powers being the fact 
that for at least one of its most interesting features 
he is indebted to Comte.^^'"^ 

The idea of the book is the application of the 
methods of ph^^sical science to the treatment of the 
moral sciences. Hitherto these had been mainly 
deductive. It is true that Hume, in his Treatise of 
Human Nature, had suggested the alternative, — had, 
in fact, thrown out the plan of a somewhat similar 
work to that of Mill. But this side of Hume's 
labours had not been followed up. Many studies, 
which attracted much attention and absorbed the 
energy of numerous scholars, were in a merely 
chaotic state, owing to the want of scientific arrange- 
ment. Histories, for instance, were written from 
the point of view of the writer's prepossessions, or 
were so destitute of all method as to be unworthy of 
serious study. It was Mill's desire to change all 
this by a proof of the possibility of inductive moral 
sciences. 

^^^ Autobiography^ p. 210. 



The Apostle of Benthamism, 151 

He begins by setting boldly out in the search for 
a science of human nature. The material side of 
human nature had, of course, long been the subject 
of scientific study as the matter of physiology and 
its branches. But Mill proposed to extend the 
process to the mental side, placing the inductive 
science of psychology side by side with that of 
physiology as the parent-stem of numerous branches, 
the starting-point for a thorough investigation of the 
laws of man regarded as a spiritual being. The 
question whether psychology would ultimately prove 
to be, as some philosophers asserted, itself a branch 
of physiology, he preferred to leave open, maintain- 
ing that, in its undecided condition, it did not inter- 
fere with his plans. 

From the conclusions of this fundamental inductive 
science of psychology, which had already been pro- 
pounded by his father, and was very shortly to 
receive further treatment at the hands of Professor 
Bain and Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mill proposed to 
deduce another science, the science of the formation 
of character. We have seen that it was one of the 
essentials of his philosophy that the law of causa- 
tion held in the matter of human conduct just as 
completely as in the course of external events. 
Consequently, if we could know the working of the 
laws of mind, and the nature of the events upon 
which they operate, we could trace the formation 
and development of the character, both of the in- 
dividual and the community. Owing to the complex 
nature of the phenomena, this science of ethology (for 



152 Thomas Carlyle and John Shta7^t Mill. 

so Mill proposed to call it) would not itself be capable 
of being made an inductive science. An attempt to 
construct it on inductive principles would lead to 
mere empiricism, but, the general law being deduced 
from the conclusions of psychology, its truth could 
be tested by verification a posteriori. 

Upon the sciences of psychology and ethology, 
the sciences of individual life. Mill then proceeded to 
build the science of man in society. Hitherto this 
subject had been treated as an art, hardly as a 
science. The object of most writers had been to 
frame a system of precepts for the guidance of 
rulers, not to ascertain the actual sequences of social 
phenomena. The result had not been such as to 
bring credit to the subject, for it was easy to see 
that, in their philosophical views, these writers were 
influenced mainly by their own prepossessions. 

To one who held Mill's view of the doctrine of 
necessity, the only difficulty in the way of the 
evolution of a science of sociology lay in the com- 
plex character of the phenomena involved. This 
complexity led him to conclude that the social 
science must of necessity be deductive, although 
founded upon the inductive science of psychology. 
But even after this determination the 'difficulties 
were formidable. " If all the resources of science 
are not sufficient to enable us to calculate a. priori 
with complete precision the mutual action of three 
bodies gravitating towards one another, it may be 
judged with what prospect of success we should 
endeavour to calculate the result of the conflicting 



The Apostle of Benthamism, 153 

tendencies which are acting in a thousanci different 
directions and promoting a thousand different changes 
at a given instant in a given society." ^^^ It must be 
noticed, however, that Mill's individualistic view of 
society cleared away for him one great difficulty 
which obstructs the efforts of socialist philosophers 
even to imagine a social science. " The laws of 
^he phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing 
but the laws of the actions and passions of human 
beings united together in the social state. . . . Men 
are not, when brought together, converted into 
another kind of substance, with different properties. 
. . . Human beings in society have no properties 
but those which are derived from, and may be re- 
solved into, the laws of the nature of individual 
man."^^-^ It is needless to observe that there are, 
and have long been, philosophers of eminence who 
do not take this view of society. 

For dealing with the phenomena of society as 
conceived by Mill, there are two methods, both 
consisting of a double process of deduction and 
verification. The first, the discovery of Comte, 
consists of generalizations from history, " verified, 
not originally suggested, by deduction from the 
laws of human nature." ^'^^ This process Mill con- 
ceived to be most suitable for the study of sociology 
regarded as embracing the totality of social con- 
ditions. Society might be considered as in the 



^^° Logic, book vi., cap. ix., § i. 
^^'^ Ibid., cap. vii., § i. 

152 



Ibid., cap. ix., § i. 



154 Thomas' Carlyle and John Stuart Alill. 

momentary condition of equilibrium, in which case 
the necessary generahzations were obtained by an 
anal3''sis of a large number of concurrent states, and 
then explained by reference to the laws of psy- 
chology. To the body of conclusions thus evolved 
Comte gave the name of Social Statics. Or society 
might be regarded as in a continual condition of 
evolution, and then the generalizations to be ob- 
tained would consist of rules of sequence observed 
in a study of history in the ordinary sense of the 
term, the difficult}^ in dealing with the enormous 
number of the forces always at work being solved 
by the attention being confined to that one which, in 
Comte's view, was a sure key to the rest, — the pro- 
gress of *'the speculative faculties of mankind, 
including the nature of the beliefs which by any 
means they have arrived at concerning themselves 
and the world by which they are surrounded." ^'^ 
These generalizations, when corrected by reference 
to psychological laws, would form a body of Social 
Dynamics, which, combined with the body of 
knowledge known as Social Statics, would form 
the science of General Sociology, the key to 
the explanation of the phenomena of universal 
history. 

But, highly as he valued this historical m.ethod 
as the true process for investigating the problems of 
general sociology, Mill insisted upon the desirability 
of a use of the Direct Deductive Method as the 
means for a satisfactory study of departmental 
1-^3 Logic; book vi., chap, x., § 7. 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 1 5 5 

sociology. In his view there were many branches 
of sociology which could be most advantageously 
studied apart from the general conditions of society 
in which they were imbedded. Thus Political 
Economy, involved as it undoubtedly is in an 
extremely complex state of social conditions, may 
nevertheless be abstracted for the purposes of 
scientific study with great advantage, provided only 
that the real conditions of its existence be kept 
ultimately in mind. Similarly v\/ith the case of 
Political Ethology, or the science of tli(' aptitudes 
and capabilities of the human mind for particular 
forms of government. 

These departmental studies are, according to Mill, 
best carried on by means of the method which 
begins with direct deduction from psychological 
laws, and then verifies its conclusions by observa- 
tion and experiment. Thus, it is a psychological 
fact that the human mind is capable of feelings 
social and individual, of v/hich the individual tend 
always strongly to predominate. In the per- 
formance, therefore, of an occupation at once social 
and indivi(^ual, such as the carrying on of trade 
or the conduct of government, it might be expected 
that the individual interests of the agent would 
be apt to override his sense of social duties. 
To make this conclusion a reliable rule for the 
guidance of investigation, or a safe foundation 
for the construction of a theory, it will be 
necessary to verify it by an extensive observation 
of phenomena. Do the individual interests of men 



156 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtai^t Mill, 

engaged in business or politics, as a general 
rule, actually tend to obliterate their sense of social 
duties ? 

Here must end my feeble sketch of the intei;isely 
interesting contents of the sixth book of the Logic. 
Some attempt to estimate the results which have 
flowed from the work in the forty years which 
have elapsed since it made its appearance must 
hereafter be made. At the present moment one 
thing only remains to be offered as a criticism. 
The thoroughly individualistic conception of the 
whole scheme is obvious. Psychology, the science 
upon which, according to Mill, the whole of the 
moral sciences must ultimately rest, is with him 
the science of the minds of men, not of the mind 
of man. He works from the individual to society, 
not from society to the individual. This fact is 
really the key to the whole of Mill's intellectual 
character. It explains his devotion to the inductive 
method, which is a building up of particulars into 
generals, his condemnation of intuition, which is the 
communication of the individual with the universe, 
his adhesion to laissez-faire and the rights of 
minorities, his fondness for logic, which, at any 
rate as at present conceived, is an individual pro- 
cess; and it largely accounts also for his advocacy 
of the claims of women. There was not a shade 
of transcendentalism in him ; the few really great 
thoughts which are to be found in his pages, of 
which his well-known estimate of the functions of 
labour in the physical universe is an admirable 



The Apostle of Benthamism. 1 5 7 

specimen/'"''* are the results of hard logical proof. 
The rarefied mountain-air which blows upon us as 
we read the words of such men as Emerson never 
visits the student of Mill ; but in place of it we 
have the perfection of ordinary climate, in which 
the hygienic conditions are in exact order, and 
^here is no need of spectacles to screen the eyes 
from the glare of the sun. 

1''' roliiical Economy t vol. i., p. 32. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE POTTER S CLAY. 



WE have seen that in position and attitude 
towards the world Carlyle and Mill 
stand wide apart. The one is the solitary 
prophet of a forgotten creed ; the voice of 
one crying in the wilderness. The other is the 
expounder, elaborator, and reformer of a doctrine 
which has already taken firm hold on men's 
minds. 

In qualities, no less than in attitude, have we 
also seen that they differed. Carlyle is the poet, 
the orator, the artist, the intuitionist, the trans- 
cendentalist, the German ; Mill, the logician, the 
pleader, the man of science, the experimental 
philosopher, the rationalist, the Frenchman. In 
everything they are opposites, or, as one would 
prefer to think, complements of each other. 

Finally, we have seen that the teaching of the 
two men was, in appearance at least, wholly 
different. Carlyle's message is simple, " Let duty 
be your first aim, your work your worship ; be 



The Potters Clay. 159 

reverent, be true ; be righteousness your ideal. 
' Love not Pleasure ; love God. This is the 
Everlasting Yea.' " In other terms Mill. '' Im- 
prove your machinery of politics and education ; 
study the interests of yourself and the world ; 
examine everything, be satisfied with nothing that 
^ou cannot prove ; be the General Happiness your 
supreme test of right and wrong," If we might 
sum up the difference of teaching in a single 
phrase, we should say : Carlyle is concerned with 
the improvement of character, Mill with the im- 
provement of conduct. 

We have now to attempt some estimate of the 
effect produced upon the world by the teaching of 
the two men whom we have been considerins:. 
And we may obtain a certain appearance of method, 
if we first enquire what, from our knowledge of 
human nature, we might suppose the impressions 
to have been, and then ascertain by reference to 
history whether our expectations have been ful- 
filled. 

The working lives of Carlyle and Mill fall 
within the period of thirty-five years between 1833 
and 1868. In the first of these years Sar/or began 
to appear in the pages of Fraser, and in the last 
Mill retired from parliamentary life to the solitude 
of Avignon, Carlyle having already bidden farewell 
to the world in the Edinburgh speech of 1866. 
It is from this period and the few years which 
preceded it, therefore, that both drew the colour 
of their thoughts, and it is necessary to bear in 



i6o Thomas Carlyle and John Shiart Mill. 

mind the character of the time, if we would under- 
stand their relations with it. 

We considered, in our study of Carlyle, the 
leading social and political conditions of the age. 
There can be no doubt of Carlyle's profound dis- 
satisfaction with it. His whole meaning lies in 
that dissatisfaction. But it must be pointed out 
that the ennui which Carlyle saw was not a fiction 
of his own imagination. Mill, writing in 1836, in 
his optimistic days, says : — 

*' There has crept over the refined classes, over the whole 
class of gentlemen in England, a moral effeminacy, an 
inaptitude for every kind of struggle. They shrink from 
all effort, from everything which is troublesome and disagree- 
able. . . . They cannot undergo labour, they cannot brook 
ridicule, they cannot brave evil tongues : they have not the 
hardihood to say an unpleasant thing to any one whom they 
are in the habit of seeing, or to face, even with a nation 
at their back, the coldness of some little coterie which sur- 
rounds them."^^^ 

It is pretty clear, then, that Carlyle and Mill were 
agreed about the virtues of the aristocracy. The 
middle classes were in full fervour of their worship 
of the god Respectability, and the lower classes were 
represented by Chartism. Mr. Tennyson (as he 
then was) is so admirable a reflection of the feelings 
of his generation, that we may reasonably expect 
to find in his writings some evidence to guide us. 
Let us look at this picture, drawn in 1855, by a 
professed pessimist certainly, but presumably with 
some reference to facts : — 

i^" Civilization^ " Dissertations," vol. i., p. 180. 



The Potters Clay. i6i 

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? We have 
made them a curse, 
Pickpockets, each hand histing for all that is not its own; 
And hist of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse 
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own 
hearthstone ? 

But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of 

mind, 
« When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's 
ware or his word ? 
Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind 
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. 
* * * * # 

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, 

When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, 

like swine. 

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie ^ 

Peace in her vineyard — yes ! — but a company forges the 

• wine. 

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, 

Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled 
wife, 
And chalk, and alum, and plaster, are sold to the poor for 
bread, 
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life, 

And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villainous centre-bits 
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless 
nights, 
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he 
sits 
To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights. 

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee. 
And Timour Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones. 
Is it peace or war ? Better war, loud war by land and by 
sea, 
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred 
thrones." ^^^ 

And such, only braver, is the tone all through the 
^^•^ Maud, part i., I., stanzas vi. — xii. 

I I 



1 62 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

works of the Corn-Law Rhymer, Ebenezer Elliott, 
who, true man as he was, spoke of things as he 
saw them. Mr. Matthew Arnold too, criticizing 
the latter years of our period, finds them tending 
gravely towards anarch}'', the ideal of human con- 
duct being " Doing as One Likes." ^'''^ Well, it is 
very difficult to tell if one age is better or worse 
than others. To Macaulay the times seemed 
pleasant enough, and Mr. Roebuck, before the 
repeal of the Corn Laws, could invite the Sheffield 
cutlers to " consider our unrivalled happiness." 
But on the whole it appears that the minds of 
thoughtful people misgave them much during the 
years 1833 — 1868. 

As Carlyle himself pointed out, it was only the 
middle part of the body social that had anything 
earnest or satisfied in it. The middle classes were 
absorbed in the worship of Mammon and Respecta- 
bility, they were making money with all their might. 
Political Economy was their creed, and a fortune 
their heaven. It could not be expected that they 
should pay very much attention to unorthodox 
teachers. 

But of the extremes — the one torpid, the other 
feverishly dissatisfied — what should we expect their 
conduct to be ? 

If the victim of ennui have sufficient strength to 
make an effort to deliver himself, he is generally 
advised, he generally feels, that he ought to get 

'•^" Cidture a)id Ana?'chy (written in 1869), 3rd edition, 
pp. 50-61. 



The Potters Clay. 163 

something to do. It does not occur to him that the 
tendency to ennui is the result of a vicious disposi- 
tion, of sellisliness long indulged, of evil habits and 
excesses, of a low standard of life in general. He 
generally attributes his unhappiness to external 
causes, and catches eagerly at any suggestion which 
«i<ixpends its effect upon them. 

So too the feverish and excited patient takes 
refuge from himself in temporary activity. The best 
thing he can possibly do is to strive after calmness, 
to avoid all occasions of agitation, to cease experi- 
menting upon this and that medicine. But to these 
remedies he does not incline. Me will try 'every- 
thing ; in something there may be relief, and at least 
it is a relief to be occupied. 

Both these extremes then, wc might expect, would 
accept far more readily the teaching of Mill than 
that of Carlyle. People have always found Carlyle 
" vague," and so in one sense he was. He had no 
" Morrison's Pill " for the regeneration of mankind. 
He did not believe that " the present wretched 
education and wretched social arrangements " were 
the only bars to universal happiness. With both 
these classes Mill would have the early success 
which an empiricist always enjoys. 

But on another ground we might expect the effect of 
Mill's teaching to be the more rapid. His philosophy 
was framed upon a consideration of man as he ts, 
Carlyle's upon a view of man as he ought to be. 
Looking at the world from a positivist standpoint, 
Mill strove to guide and elevate the tendencies which 



164 Thomas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill. 

he saw to be actually existing ; possibly he had not 
the mental force necessary to separate himself from 
the feelings in which he shared, and to enable 
him to contemplate alternatives. His philosophy 
was, to a certain extent, the supplement of the 
practices he saw around him. Consequently his 
teaching came into no violent collision with esta- 
blished tendencies and modes of thought. He was 
truly orthodox, he always inclined to the opinion 
of the majority. 

Carlyle, on the other hand, was in violent opposi- 
tion to the tendencies of the age. The " Spirit of 
Progress " he openly mocked at ; Mammonism he 
despised; the well-fed optimism of the Edinburgh 
Review seemed to him a hollow sham. He flung 
down his challenge against the whole intellectual 
world. On these grounds, also, we should expect 
that the influence of Mill would be early felt, while 
that of Carlyle would fail to appear for some 
time. 

But, from what we know of human nature, we 
might conjecture that the original verdict of the world 
might come to be reversed. The appeal to the 
understanding may be successful at first, and under- 
standing goes sometimes a long way. There have 
been men, such as Gibbon, with whom the intellectual 
faculties always remain a sufficient guide, in whom 
passion and enthusiasm appear to be non-existent. 
But such cases are comparatively rare. In most 
instances the man turns away from what he under- 
stands to what he feels. His real beliefs are not 



The Potter s Clay. 165 

things that can be discussed or put into language ; 
they are above logical expression, they are transcen- 
dental. In Mill's posthumous essays there are traces 
which seem to show that even he felt this. And 
certainly with most men, including those who, by 
general consent, are accounted amongst the world's 
fioblest, the need of some ideal is always felt. It 
was Mazzini's expressed conviction that no great 
cause was ever achieved without the help of heroes 
who said in their hearts, '' It is the will of God." 
Put into poetical language, such a craving is for 
Shelley — 

The devotion to something afar 
From the sphere of our sorrow. 

" Wouldst thou plant for Eternity," says Carlyle, 
'* then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man 
. . . wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then 
plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his self- 
love and Arithmetical Understanding." ^^^ And so we 
should expect that, after some time, especially if the 
age were one of fading ideals, the world would turn 
towards one who held up the prospect of a more 
exalted faith. Let us see if we can verify these 
a priori conclusions. 

It will, of course, be necessary to confine our 
observation to England. Supposing the question of 
competency to be satisfactorily solved, we should 
exceed all reasonable limits if we examined the 
conditions of foreign countries with care sufficient to 
warrant the probability of any conclusions we might 
158 Sartor, p. 155. 



1 66 Thomas Carlylc and John Stuart MilL 

draw. And Mr. Matthew Arnold has warned us 
against supposing that the Hghts of our small firma- 
ment are discerned in the greater heaven of Con- 
tinental thought. Carlyle is undoubtedly known in 
Germany, as a historian and something more. Our 
friend Meyer, in the last edition of his invaluable 
little Hand-Lexikon, speaks of him as. — ^^ Em Autor 
von origincUcm Charakter, eifriger Apostel des Evan- 
gel in dis dcr Arbeit, als Hisiorikcr An hanger des 
Heroenknltus ; seine Sprache geistvoll nnd ivitzig, aher 
oft diinkel nnd barocky^^'^ (It will be observed that 
the good Meyer is not exact in his discernment of 
the apostolic functions, as we have been.) And in 
the still later edition of his Konversation^ s-Lcxikon he 
will so far commit himself as to say that — " Ohnc 
jenials ini vidgarcnt Sinn des Worts popular zu sein, 
hat doch kein nenerer Schriftsteller anf die Litteratur, 
vielleicht auf die ganze geistige Entivickelung seines 
Vaterlandes so sehr eingewirkt ivie Carlyle ^ ^*'*' We 
may also remember with pride the letter and Order 
of Merit from Prince Bismarck, and the birthday 
address from German professors, who are assuredly 
not apt to over-estimate the merits of English writers, 
even when the latter have written German histories. 
In truth Carlyle's Fricdrich is a work of European 
reputation, and were it not that we were here con- 
cerned with him rather as a direct teacher than as 
a historian, we might make great capital out of the 
fact that even to German readers Carlyle transcends 

'•■^^ Meyer's Hand-lexikon, subtit. " Carlyle'' 
160 Meyer's Koiiversat ion's Lcxikon., ibid. 



TJic Poller s Clay. 167 

the ideal of thoroughness. Of Mill too we may 
affirm that he is known, both in France and Germany, 
as a philosopher who has had his day. His works 
have been translated, and M. Littrd has written upon 
the English reflection of the true Comtian sun. 

But it is with England that we must concern 
ourselves. Mere Mill's theory of tilings certainly 
appears at first sight to be in the ascendant. When 
he died, he was, in almost all cases, the ultimate 
appeal of the Radical party, who by their superior 
energy have since made the history of Parliamentary 
politics. His reforms have been carried out, or at 
least attempts made towards thcmi. His policy has 
been embodied in the Irisli Land Acts of 1 870 and 
1 88 1, and has been extended to England by the 
Agricultural Holdings Act. His advocacy of the 
claims of women has resulted in the tlu-ee Married 
Women's Property Acts and the separation clauses 
of the Divorce Acts. A small instalment even in the 
direction of the representation of minorities was paid 
by the Reform Act of 1867, which introduced '' three- 
cornered " constituencies. And if the Radicals have 
been deaf to Mill's arguments against the maintenance 
of the ballot, it is not for want of evidence to support 
them. The inquiry of i88r ought to have dissipated 
all theories of the purity of the ballot for ever. Mill's 
advocacy of the cause of Political Economy has led 
to the more enlightened teaching of the subject. 
Chairs of Political Economy have been established 
at the Universities. America is taking up the study 
with interest, and all the professors of the science 



1 68 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuarl Mill. 

look to Mill as the first of the moderns. The 
famous sixth book of the Logic has done that which 
its great prototype, the Treatise of Human Nature^ 
failed to do, and we have had a succession of thinkers, 
such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Bagehot, Mr. 
Buckle, and Professor Seeley, who, if they do not 
owe their ideas to the Logic ^ at least work upon the 
same lines as those which it suggests. Finally, 
Mill's school of thought has been represented on 
its most attractive side by one who divides with 
Thackeray the supreme honours of the m.odern world 
of fiction. As Comte had his Balzac, so Mill and 
the scientific school have had their George Eliot, 
who has poetized their discoveries and done much 
to make them popular. And if the Radicals claim 
Mr. Swinburne, as a republican poet, for their ranks, 
the claim cannot perhaps be denied ; though Mr. 
Swinburne's republics differ as widely from the 
Radical ideal of universal suffrage and a single 
representative chamber as do Walt Whitman's 
theories of democracy from those on which his 
own presidential Government is based. 

There is often no better way of testing the effect 
which a man's life has produced than by considering 
the characters of his children. We see there how 
the paternal influence survives amid the new cir- 
cumstances of a younger generation, modified and 
coloured by them, but retaining its old expression. 
The place which in i860 was occupied by Mill is 
now filled by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Our scientific 
young men now look up to the author of the Data of 



The Potter s Clay. 169 

Ethics as the scientific young men of i860 looked 
up to the author of Liberty. Never was a clearer 
case of philosophic inheritance. The high priesthood 
of the temple of science has descended from Mill to 
Spencer. If we look for a moment at the latter's 
Confession of Faith, we shall be able to see what 
modifications of the older creed time has brought 
vvith it. 

The leading idea of Mr. Herbert Spencer's philo- 
sophy is the unity of life and its development by 
evolution. This is a supreme, unalterable law, and 
by it all things stand or fall. '' The wages of sin is 
death," Mr. Herbert Spencer has understood to mean 
" whatever tends to produce death is sin." The 
perfect state is that in which the conditions are 
completely adapted to the full development of life, 
and the test of conduct is its tendency to produce 
that state. Now that which most surely tends to 
promote and enlarge life is pleasure of all kinds, and, 
on the contrary, all kinds of pain result in different 
degrees of injury to the development of life. There- 
fore the supreme test of conduct is also its tendency 
to produce pleasure or pain. The absolutely right 
action is that which results in unmixed pleasure, the 
relatively right that which on the whole produces 
more pleasure than pain ; the absolutely wrong, that 
of which the results are wholly painful, and the 
relatively wrong that from which there results a 
surplus of pain over pleasure.^^^ 

So far at least we can trace the genesis clearly. 
^^^ Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, passim. 



170 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

Mill must have had a presentiment of the doctrine 
so earnestly preached by Mr. Herbert Spencer, — the 
doctrine that the laws of the physical and spiritual 
worlds work in harmony by the same methods, 
making life one whole, — or he would hardly have 
insisted so strongly on the application of physical 
methods to the study of moral sciences. It is true 
that the evolution theory is not fully avowed in his 
writings ; but the laws of association, as applied to 
the mental conditions by the school of psychologists 
to which he owned allegiance, bring us very near to 
the same idea. The maxim of Von Humboldt, prefixed 
to the essay On Liberty, might serve without much 
criticism as the watchword of the Data of Ethics. It 
does not do to attempt too close definitions of the 
positions of philosophers ; no one really understands 
them but themselves, and outsiders get into trouble 
if they meddle with such mysteries. Yet one might 
almost feel tempted to frame the proposition, that as 
Comte is to Mill, so is Mill to Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
For the agreement does not stop at speculation. 
Mr. Spencer is also a champion of Representative 
Government. It is true that he has done rather a 
rash thing in defence of it. It may be said that for 
a man of eminent critical ability to begin his defence 
of an institution by collecting all the weapons he 
can lay hands on to put into his adversary's grasp, 
is more generous, perhaps, than wise. The eye of 
the critic is like the eye of the hunter. He begins to 
knock down a few head of game, just by way of trial, 
and then the instinct grows upon him, and he becomes 



The Potters Clay. 171 

more deadly with each shot, and he cannot leave off 
till the forest is cleared and the dead He in heaps 
around him. And such a course, if the forest hap- 
pens to be his own hunting-ground, is apt to lead 
to awkward consequences. Mr. Herbert Spencer has 
unmasked a terrible battery of guns against Repre- 
sentative Government, and has succeeded in flatly 
demolishing all the proud towers thereof. He shows 
irresistibly that under a ruling body composed of 
many units harmonious government is not to be 
expected ; that such bodies do hot attract men of 
intelligence and character; that, on the contrary, their 
ranks are filled by schemers of all kinds, who have 
their personal advantages, often inconsistent with 
those of the community, principally in view ; that 
such governments tend almost irresistibly to become 
extravagant ; that their ignorance is generally 
extreme. So far all goes smoothly enough ; except 
that the believer in Representative Government must 
begin to think this a strange kind of champion. But 
when the other side of the question is to be presented, 
and Mr. Herbert Spencer has to show that this dis- 
mantled castle is still a very good comfortable man- 
sion, suited to modern requirements, then he is not 
quite so effective. He talks a good deal about the 
iniquities of tyrants (rather a juvenile theme); indulges 
in a tirade against '' hero-worship," — from which it 
appears that in Mr. Spencer's view anybody may be 
recognized as a " hero " if he be strong enough ; and 
proceeds finally to assert that representative govern- 
ment would be a very good government if it would 



172 Thomas Carlyle and John Shear t Mill. 

only confine itself to what Mr. Spencer regards as 
its proper limits, — a moderation of which, as he him- 
self woefully admits, it never appears to be capable.^^^ 
Still Mr. Herbert Spencer must be reckoned a follower 
of Mill in his advocacy of representative government, 
and, practically, a follower on the same path. 

In his adherence to individualism and insistence 
on laissez-faire f Mr. Herbert Spencer even outstrips 
his predecessor. His individualism is that of Godwin 
rather than that of Mill. He will have government 
do nothing but administer justice, i.e., protect its sub- 
jects from external and internal aggression. This is 
the only task for which government is fitted in an 
advanced state of society, and in proportion as social 
conditions become more complex, the more hopeless 
it will be for a government to attempt to do anything 
more. " Increasing ability to perform its true duty 
involves increasing inability to perform all other kinds 
of action." ^^^ This is a law of that progress which 
results in the specialization of functions, of which the 
physiological division of labour is an example. 

We have seen that Mr. Herbert Spencer regards 
the tendency to produce happiness as the ultimate 
test of conduct. In this view he may seem to come 
very near to utilitarianism as Mill understood it, and 
were it not that he has subjected the utilitarian theory 
to what is perhaps the severest criticism it has ever 
undergone,^*^* we might have fallen into the error of 

^^^ Represe7itative Government^ "Essays,"' vol. ii., p. 163. 

i«3 Ibid., p. 208. 

^^^ Data of Ethics, pp. 220 — 237. 



The Potters Clay. 173 

regarding him as a subscriber to its truth. Clearly 
he has shown that the distribution of happiness is 
impossible, in the ordinary sense of the word. Hap- 
piness is not " something that can be cut up into 
parts and handed round." ^'^'' But the utilitarian idea 
is not only the distribution of happiness, but the pro- 
duction of happiness. And Mr. Spencer seems to 
have supposed that Mill recommended the pursuit of 
the general happiness as a practical rule of conduct, 
while, as we have seen, Mill abandoned that view before 
he wrote the Utilitarianism. In fact, the whole of the 
criticism seems to be actuated by a fear that the 
adoption of utilitarian doctrines would lead eventually 
to ascetic altruism, a result which is the special object 
of Mr. Spencer's aversion. No wonder that Mill, in 
whose lifetime some of these criticisms were published, 
should have failed to find the reason for them, and 
that Mr. Spencer himself should '' object to being 
considered an opponent of Utilitarianism." ^^^ 

It is in his views upon the subject of intuition that 
Mr. Herbert Spencer really differs most from Mill. 
The latter, as we have seen, regarded with abhorrence 
" the notion that truths external to the mind may be 
known by intuition or consciousness." And it has 
also been pointed out that Mr. Spencer, accepting the 
doctrine of association of ideas, even pushing it still 
farther by his application of the principle of evolution, 
on that very ground gives to intuitions, as the in- 
herited results of ages of observation and experience, 

^'^^ Data of Ethics^ p. 222. 

^^^ Utilitarianism ^ p. 93, note. 



174 Thomas Carlyle and John Sttiart Mill. 

a very high place in the armoury of scientific dis- 
covery. In fact, he argues that observation would 
be impossible if the truth of consciousness were not 
postulated. " The testimony of experience is given 
only through memory ; and its worth depends wholly 
on the trustworthiness of memory. Is it, then, that 
the trustworthiness of memory is less open to doubt 
than the immediate consciousness that two quantities 
must be unequal if they differ from a third quantity 
in unequal degrees ? This can scarcely be alleged." ^°'' 
But for all this difference, the conclusions of the 
two thinkers mainly agree. Mill rejects the testimony 
of consciousness, supposing it to conflict with the 
testimony of experience ; Mr. Spencer admits it as 
the only rational foundation on which the testimony 
of experience can be accepted. '' It is in the interests 
of the Experience-Hypothesis that Mr. Mill opposes 
the alleged criterion of truth ; while it is as har- 
monising with the Experience-Hypothesis, and re- 
conciling it with all the facts, that I defend this 
criterion." '^^^ And certainly, if we compare the net 
results of Mr. Spencer's ethical teaching with what 
we have seen of Mill's, we shall be tempted to regard 
the differences as not very substantial. '' Hence, 
recognising in due degrees all the various ethical 
theories, conduct in its highest form will take as 
guides innate perceptions of right duly enlightened 
and made precise by an anal3'tic intelligence ; while 
conscious that these guides are proximately supreme 

^^^ J//// versus Hamilton^ "Essays," vol. ii., p. 411. 
1^ Ibid.^ p. 413. 



The Potter s Clay. 175 

solely because they lead to the ultimately supreme 
end, happiness special and general." ^'^^ And in order 
to show how modern criticism has modified Mill's 
views on the subject of intuition, we may quote one 
more passage, this time from another influential 
thinker of the same school, Professor Huxley. '' In 
whichever way we look at the matter, morality is 
based on feeling, not on reason. . . . The moral law, 
like the laws of physical nature, rests in the long 
run upon instinctive intuitions, and is neither more 
nor less * innate ' and ' necessary ' than they are." ^^^ 
We mxay venture to conclude then, on the whole, that 
the most modern scientific thought has, on the subject 
of ethics at least, not proceeded very far beyond the 
stage at which Mill left it. His theory of association 
has been greatly broadened by its expansion into 
the full current of Darwinian speculation. And an 
important amendment has been made in his testing 
process, an amendment, however, more apparent in 
the machinery of work than in the results which it 
produces. But otherwise there is not much change 
to show. 

We have seen now how Mr. Herbert Spencer 
resembles Mill in his wisdom. It may perhaps be 
admissible to point out that there is also trace of 
an hereditary weakness in the later thinker. It will 
be remembered that we accused Mill of a shade of 
pedantry in his objections to Caesar and his enthu- 
siasm for the analogy between the "infinitesimal. 

^^^ Data of Ethics, pp. 172, 173. 

170 Hume, English Men of Letters Series, p. 207. 



176 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

calculus " and " the corpuscular hypothesis in 
physics." This same tendency, which very learned 
scientific men are apt to betray, is to be found in 
Mr. Herbert Spencer's writings. A single instance 
will be sufficient to indicate it. 

"It is strange," says Mr. Spencer, " that a notion so abstract 
as that of perfection, or a certain ideal completeness of nature, 
should ever have been thought one from which a system of 
guidance can be evolved ; as it was in a general way by Plato, 
and JHore distinctly by Jonatlian Edwa?'ds.'"^'^^ 

Not to have seen the bathos of thus coupling 
together the great Athenian philosopher and the 
New England Calvinist divine argues a strange 
want of humour in the composition of Mr. Herbert 
Spencer's mind. But it is time that we turn to 
a hasty glance at the other disciples of Mill's 
school. 

It almost seemed, at one time, as if the brilliant 
author of The English Constitution would eclipse the 
fame of his predecessor. Written only a few years 
after Mill's Representative Government saw the light, 
Mr. Bagehot's work manifested a scientific skill equal 
to that of the older writer, together with a delicate 
perception of facts and feelings which is hardly found 
in the pages of Mill. It substituted in the minds 
of Englishmen, and, to some extent, of Europeans, 
for the theories of Montesquieu, Delolme, and 
Blackstone, the true theory of the actual working 
constitution. It does not, of course, occupy the high 
ethical ground of the Representative Government, 

^" Data of Ethics, p. 32. 



The Potter s Clay. 177 

neither does it take so wide a sweep. But it puts 
before us the facts as they are, with a vividness 
which enables us to see clearly the safeguards and 
the dangers. Since Bagehot wrote, we have heard 
little of the equally balanced powers, whose equili- 
brium must be preserved at the risk of political 
slavery. No government could possibly work so, 
any more than an army could conquer which had 
two independent and equally authoritative generals. 
The English constitution worked in 1867 because the 
country delegated supreme power for an indefinite 
period to a small committee of managers, whose 
decisions were practically absolute. But Bagehot 
was true at heart to representative government ; 
he endeavoured to improve it ; he saw some of its 
weaknesses, but he was as staunch as Mill himself 
to the institution. " The practical choice of first-rate 
nations is between the Presidential Government and 
the Parliamentary ; no State can be first-rate which 
has not a Government by discussion, and those are 
the only two existing species of that Government." ^''^ 
This is the sentiment of a true positivist, and a 
positivist Bagehot undoubtedly was. As has been 
hinted, he came near to eclipsing Mill himself. He 
wrote on Political Economy, and his productions, 
fragmentary as they are, bear evidences of the 
highest order of scientific thought. He wrote a 
book on the application of physical principles to 
political societies, in which much of what has since 
been done in that direction is suggested. We have 
^''^ Bagehot, Essays o?i Parliamentary Reform^ 1883, p. 248. 

12 



178 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

every reason to judge, from the work he actually 
accomplished, that in the department of pure mental 
science he would have been exceptionally success- 
ful. Unfortunately for his reputation as a scientific 
thinker, he had also brilliant literary ability. His 
Literary Studies are some of the most delicious read- 
ing in the whole of English criticism. He stands 
indeed on the very border line between Philistia and 
Judoea, and it is with regret we find that in his heart 
of hearts he appears to have enshrined the gods of 
heathendom. A comfortable fortune, an environment 
blessed by all the discoveries of science, and an 
agreeable philosophy of social conventions, seem to 
him, after all, better worth a man's life than a 
Quixotic devotion to ideals. But it is just for this 
reason that he falls inevitably into the ranks of the 
army of science. 

If an early death robbed the world of the fruit 
which the works of Bagehot had foreshadowed, a 
similar fate befell the promise of Thomas Buckle. 
From him we might have expected a complete 
philosophy of history on positivist lines. He did 
enough to show in what direction his thoughts lay, 
and the precocity of his talent led to the hope that 
time might be given him to succeed in an enterprise 
which demanded an almost Herculean amount of 
labour. 

Mr. Buckle's death has left the field to another 
teacher. In suggesting Professor Seeley as a con- 
tinuer of Mill's work, I do not of course mean to 
imply that Professor Seeley's views on ethical and 



The Potter'' s Clay, 179 

political subjects agree with those of Mill. But it 
does appear that in his philosophy of history Pro- 
fessor Secley is working out some of the suggestions 
contained in the sixth book of the Logic. It is 
true that the key to history is found by Professor 
Seeley to be not, as Comte suggested and Mill 
approved, the state of the speculative faculties of 
mankind from age to age, but the development of 
the political forms under which they live. This is 
certainly not the point at which Mill and Professor 
Seeley touch. But in the application by the latter 
of the physical method to the study of history, in 
his favourite illustration of vegetable physiology as 
the model for the construction of a science of state- 
forms, we seem to see a strong grasp and deter- 
mined adaptation of the ideas suggested by the 
author of the Logic. 

So far then it appears that, on the speculative 
side, at least, the tidal wave of thought upon which 
Mill rode triumphant is showing no signs of reflux. 
But we must look at the practical side. 

Here also, at first sight, we seem to see all things 
dominated by the same ideas. The extension of 
the franchise has given a larger circumference than 
ever to the circle of practical politics. Great news- 
papers still exist to report the proceedings of 
" Imperial Parliament," and to spread the light of 
political knowledge by means of the temperate argu- 
ments of leader-writers. It was a happy day for 
journalism when it was discovered that the exigen- 
cies of the party system might be made to serve the 



I So Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

interests of the press ; that by virtue of the pleasing 
theory that what one party proposes the other must 
necessarily oppose, two newspapers might be made 
to grow where only one grew before. The same 
theory of course simplifies immensely the difficulty 
which otherwise presents itself as to the production 
of so much literary matter. The news-columns may 
be supplied from the Central Press Agency with 
perfect impartiality ; but it will not do to have all 
the leaders alike. Mappily it is only necessary to 
remember this one cardinal maxim : That whatever 
is proposed by a member of the other party, that 
you must abuse. So the good Radical editor must 
find in every Conservative proposal a plot to aggran- 
dize the aristocracy at the expense of the people, 
and the staunch Conservative must discover in every 
Liberal measure a reckless desire of change, and 
an unwortliy itcliing to meddle with established 
rights. 

All this works with a great deal of noise, and we 
have vacation campaigns, with mass-meetings, tre- 
mendous oratory, and great applause, ever increasing 
as the time of dissolution draws nigh. And party- 
principles extend themselves to municipal and even 
social affairs, and result in Prinnose Leagues, and 
Reform Clubs, and picnics, and pilgrimages, and 
the earth seems covered with the machinery of 
representative government ; and all these things 
make a very great noise indeed. 

But it is necessary to look a little deeper than 
this. Is representative government really as firmly 



The Potter s Clay. i8i 

fixed as it was twenty years ago? Now the stability 
of institutions may be guessed from their results, 
perhaps even better than from their appearance. 
How then does representative government actually 
work ? 

It is surely one of the first requisites of a repre- 
sentative system that it should produce a good 
representative House. A House of Commons, 
framed in accordance with English theories, might 
be said to be good if it possessed either of two 
important qualities. If it succeeded in attracting 
the wisest and noblest men in the nation it would 
be good, as affording a guarantee that the highest 
skill and probity were applied to the guidance of 
national affairs. Or again, if it succeeded in faith- 
fully reflecting the shades and currents of real 
feelings throughout the country, it would be good, 
as offering an invaluable fund of knowledge to 
those whose actual business it was to rule the 
nation, were they themselves members of Parliament 
or not. The House of Commons which combined 
these two virtues would, of course, be ideally good ; 
for it would prove that the standard of excellence 
was universal. But such a House is necessarily 
only ideal ; for if all were equally wise and noble, 
there could be no wisest and noblest. 

Does the present House of Commons possess 
either of these good qualities ? The first it can 
hardly lay claim to. With singularly few excep- 
tions, men of light and leading are not to be found 
within its walls. How is it possible that they 



1 82 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mitl, 

should be ? Will a man of ability and character 
place himself at the disposal of a Caucus Committee, 
speak as they bid him, talk platitudes night after 
night to mass-meetings, swallow all kinds of anti- 
quated formulas, perform all kinds of indirect 
bribery, to gain a seat from which the first inde- 
pendent speech he makes, the first independent vote 
he gives, is doomed to hurl him ? Will he strive 
so hardly to enter a scene in which his real know- 
ledge will be despised and refused a hearing, while 
he is condemned to sit and listen to hours of vapid 
commonplace applauded to the roof? Is his time of 
such little value that he should waste it in midnight 
sittings, while one irreconcilable after another essays 
the task of carrying brutality to the utmost degree 
consistent with non-ejectment ? And all this with 
the knowledge that his presence is futile, that 
nothing is really started in Parliament, that no idea 
has had its birth there for many years, that for all 
practical purposes Parliament does little more than 
register the decisions of public opinion, upon which 
his influence might be far greater from another 
standpoint ? It is true that some men of ability 
and character do get into Parliament, just as it is 
true that there are some such men who come to 
grief in other ways. But the chances are against it. 
And so the enlightened turn away in disgust, and 
leave the House of Commons to men who are 
neither enlightened nor commonly honest. The 
House of Commons becomes accessible to anyone 
who lives in a London suburb, has inherited a 



The Potter s Clay, 183 

brewery, and has a scheming wife. Young men 
make ParHament a stepping-stone to some employ- 
ment, or a means of filling up the time which 
elapses before they can get professional employ- 
ment. Men who have made fortunes in some 
'' ungenteel " way buy themselves into the House 
of Commons with a view, as they think, to increase 
their social importance. The House becomes less 
and less what it once was, — a body of men accus- 
tomed in their daily lives to some degree of ac- 
quaintance with public affairs, and to whom the 
business of government came, to a certain extent, 
naturally. 

But if representative government does not 
succeed in filling the House of Commons with the 
best men in the land, still less does it provide a 
House which reflects the feelings and wishes of 
the nation. A man really represents, not the con- 
stituency which votes him into his place, but the 
class of society with which he is identified in spirit 
and tendencies. Who can say that England is 
represented in this sense ? The aristocracy, which 
has already a House of its own, is represented to 
any extent by the hundred and more landowners 
and younger sons who sit in the Lower House. 
The professions are over-represented by the retired 
military and naval officers, by the medical men, and 
by the barristers, who compose another large sec- 
tion of the Commons, and the clergy are represented 
by the bishops in the House of Lords. The 
wealthy manufacturers are represented well enough. 



184 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

But when we have come so far, we have left unre- 
presented at least five-sixths of the nation. Who 
represent the feelings and aspirations of the large 
class of shopkeepers ? By whom is the ever- 
increasing army of clerks of all grades represented ? 
Or the huge class of agricultural labourers ? Or 
the still huger classes of artizans, mechanics, and 
unskilled workers ? If we make an ample deduc- 
tion for the few so-called '' Labour " 'candidates, 
some of whom are emphatically disowned by the 
great mass of the labouring men, we still have an 
overwhelming deficit to make up. Is it said that 
these classes are represented by their superiors, 
whom they elect to represent them ? Consider the 
case of an eloquent young barrister who goes down 
to canvass a small country town. He has been 
supplied by the '' Carlton " or the '' Reform." His 
life has been spent at a public school, at an English 
University, in travelling abroad, and in the streets 
of London. What does he know about life in a 
country town ? How can he represent the feelings 
of his constituency, who consist, under the new 
arrangements, probably of a few country gentle- 
men, a few professional men, a few farmers, and a 
very great many small tradesmen and agricultural 
labourers ? Supposing him to endeavour to enter 
into the life of the place, and really to wish to catch 
something of the spirit of the locality, how is it 
possible in the time at his disposal ? The private 
borough system was hardly more fallacious as an 
attempt at representation than is the carpet-bagging 



The Potter s Clay, 185 

system, for often the private borough went to a 
relative of its owner, who had local interests and 
local knowledge. 

Is it a surprising thing that with such a com- 
position the House should fail to do its work ? For 
the last few years it has seemed that it cannot 
perform even the preliminary task of keeping itself 
in order. The party-system has divided it into a 
suicidal pair of combatants, whose insane attempts 
to cut each other's throats have allowed a third party 
of irreconcilables to establish themselves in the 
position of balance-holders. To check the tendency 
towards anarchy the House has had, by means not 
the most constitutional, to place in the hands of its 
own servant arbitrary powers of government, — in 
other words, in the very heart of the representative 
system a strong application of despotism has become 
necessary. Even with this desperate remedy, work 
can hardly proceed. Every session is prolonged 
beyond its normal limits, the government of the 
day is dependent for all hope it has of progress on 
the forbearance of avowed opponents. 

To add to the confusion, the House of Commons 
has begun to claim functions which no thinking 
advocate of representative government ever dreamed 
of assigning to it. It insists on controlling, question- 
ing, and obstructing every act of the executive. It 
requires every detail of policy to be laid before it, 
and canvassed and emasculated till all the life is gone 
from the plan. Every crotchet of a nuisance-hunter 
is made the basis of an attack on the administration^ 



1 86 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

by which some one hopes to raise himself into notice. 
In its eagerness to undertake a task for which it 
is wholly unfitted, the House of Commons gives up 
its true functions of legislation and taxation. The 
legislation, the really important legislation of the 
session, is prepared by a committee of the executive 
government, and the House can do little more than 
make small amendments. Similarly with taxation. 
Not only are the estimates framed by the executive, 
which is perhaps necessary, but the means of raising 
the required sums are practically also determined in 
the same way. A Prime Minister whose Budget was 
altered by the House in an important point would 
probably resign. And then the House would have 
to vote the Budget of another Prime Minister. In 
these circumstances, it is not wonderful that the very 
minimum of real w^ork is produced. The net result 
was neatly summed up the other day by an observant 
foreigner, whose other expressions showed that he 
could appreciate the real conditions of English affairs 
perhaps better than the English themselves. It 
seemed to him ^^ que le mecanisme legislatif anglais 
fait beaucoup plus de bruit et beaucoup moins de besogne 
qu^ autrefois y ^'^ The House of Commons has even 
ceased to be a satisfactory place for the redress of 
grievances. When the working-classes want to 
make their complaints known, they demonstrate in 
Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square. Probably to every 
observant person, except its own members, the House 

i''^ Journal des Econo7nistes, August 1887. Le Mouvement 
Kconomiqtie en Angleterre, p. 242. 



The Potte7'^ s Clay. 187 

of Commons has ceased to appear an important 
body. 

But outside parliament representative government 
does not fare much better. There is no evidence 
that the tone of political morality is higher than it 
was when Carlyle thundered against the sins of 
electors in the Latter Day Pamphlets. Indeed, it 
would seem from the enquiry of 1881 that things are 
worse instead of better. The appalling amount of 
immorality disclosed on that occasion put into the 
shade, merely by reason of its superior magnitude, 
the old horrors of Grampound and Gatton ; while, 
for unblushing avowal of political dishonesty, nothing 
can equal the calmness with which the Corporaticn 
of the City of London claims to employ municipal 
funds for the purpose of influencing elections. And 
if tangible bribery has not actually increased, 
intangible bribery was never so great as now. 
It is the rarest thing to find a candidate who 
attempts to guide his constituency ; platform-orators 
generally say whatever they think will please 
their audiences best. The speech of an average 
candidate is a sound to weep over ; if he knows 
the falsehood of what he is saying, he must be 
an unblushing liar, if he does not, he must be a 
pitiable sham. 

Of the inconsistency and general absurdity of 
the party-system outside the walls of the House of 
Commons, it were hardly necessary to speak, except 
that the persistent exposure of abuses is the best 
way of getting rid of them. When was ever such 



1 88 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

a strange phenomenon seen in human history? One 
half the world has engaged to look at everything 
through red spectacles, the other half has made a 
similar engagement to wear blue. A boy of fifteen 
is scouted amongst his companions if he has not 
adopted a juvenile pair of coloured glasses. The 
mania extends to women, who are thus abdicating 
the privilege which their aloofness from the mud of 
politics has bestowed upon them, the privilege of 
seeing things as they really are. Any person who 
ventures on such a course is considered dangerous. 
If it be true, as Sir James Stephen tells us, that 
legal madness is deviation from a norm, the position 
of a non-party man may ultimately prove very 
unpleasant. 

It is an easy task to show that any reality which 
the party-system may have once had has long 
disappeared. If the party-system is to be real, it 
must be a system of beliefs, not of caprices. In the 
days when men believed in their parties the wheel of 
political fortune did not revolve in the way in which 
it does now. The Whigs ruled the country from 
1714 to the end of the century ; the Tories ruled it 
from the beginning of the new century till the death 
of George IV. And yet the Septennial Act had been 
in force all the time. But within the last fifty years 
the country has changed its governors no less than 
seven times, that is to say, if party-allegiance be 
a matter of belief, the beliefs of the nation have 
undergone seven revolutions within the space of fifty 
years. The conclusion we have drawn is the more 



The Potter s Clay. 189 

merciful of the two. Doubtless the party-system 
is an admirable safety-valve for the conduct of re- 
volutions, but that does not alter the fact that 
revolutions are undesirable things. 

Happily we are not required to take such a gloomy 
view. It is unreasonable to expect people to believe 
in* a band of leaders which is ever changing and 
dissolving, or in a creed which does not exist. Can 
any philosopher discover what are the distinctive 
features of the two, or three, or four parties which 
now divide the nation ? It is simply a battle of 
the Ins and the Outs, with a few faded flags to 
keep up a semblance of historical traditions ; and 
the only relief from the interminable contest occurs 
when the spectators interfere and insist on a certain 
movement. 

It is hardly surprising to note that, in these 
circumstances, the respect for law and order which 
was once so distinguishing a mark of the Englishman 
is passing away. London has been for some hours 
powerless in the hands of a mob. The Home-Rule 
agitation, which, curiously enough, dates from the 
very days in which the Irish Land Bill of 1870 was 
before Parliament, sets at defiance the authority of 
every Government, its leaders relying with perfect 
confidence on the Opposition to prevent effective 
measures. The Tithe-Agitation advocates open 
resistance to the administration of the law, being 
unable to make itself effectively heard in a repre- 
sentative Parliament. The crofters of Skye have 
to be dragooned into order. It hardly seems that 



I go Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

enlightened self-interest tends always in the direction 
of harmony. 

On the other hand, signs are not wanting of a 
revolt from the school of thought which has played 
so large a part in the history of the last half-century. 
The philosophic defenders of positivism and repre- 
sentative government are becoming few in number. 
Bagehot is dead, Fawcett is dead, Mr. Thorold 
Rogers and Mr. Goldwin Smith are not the figures 
they were twenty years ago. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
has told his tale. The younger school of cultivated 
Radicals, Mr. Bryce, Mr. Courtney, Sir Charles 
Dilke, Sir George Trevelyan, do not produce any 
philosophic justification of their creed. The burden 
and heat of the day is borne by Mr. John Morley 
almost alone. 

And from the xDther side the attack grov/s formid- 
able. It is part of the creed of the Radical school to 
despise poetry, — surely a very great mistake if the 
influence which poetry has exerted on politics in all 
ages be considered. But we will venture to quote 
a stanza from Mr. Tennyson (the title ivill hang 
fire) which seems to express something of what the 
world is now looking for, in spite of Mr. Herbert 
Spencer's warnings : — 

Ah God ! for a man with heart, head, hand, 
Like some of the simple great ones gone 
For ever and ever by, 
One strong still man in a blatant land, 
Whatever they call him. what care I ? 
Aristocrat, democrat, antocrat — one 
Who can rule and dare not lie.^''"^ 

^''^ Maud, part i., X., v. 



The Potters Clay. 191 

And this thought is expanded into fuller expression 
in the succeeding Idylls of the King, where it is the 
king's presence and rule that can alone bring peace 
to a troubled land ; while in his latest utterances 
Tennyson has broken still more with the philosopliy 
whose teachings he once reflected, as he reflects 
with faithful accuracy each phase of national thought. 
The very quality which impairs Tennyson's value as 
a poet renders him invaluable as an index to his age. 
We should scarcely find a truer picture of English 
popular thought than that unfolded by a chrono- 
logical study of his works. 

But if Tennyson plays the humbler part of chorus 
to the English national tragedy, there is one who 
dominates the stage like the voice of a Cassandra 
prophesying woe. If the mantle of Mill has fallen 
upon Mr. Herbert Spencer, the garment of Carlyle 
has descended upon the shoulders of Mr. Ruskin. 
With less of grandeur and prophetic imagination than 
his great predecessor, the author of Unto this Last 
and Fors Clavigera is enabled by the surpassing 
beauty of his words to bring his message more 
cjuickly home to his hearers, and to spread it abroad 
with wider acceptance. By his unrivalled mastery 
in the criticism of art, Mr. Ruskin has earned a 
position which he turns to noble use, by showing 
tiiat the foundation of all true art is a grand 
morality, a nature high and pure. And his words 
reach to the ends of the land. No one would 
question the assertion that by the upper classes 
Mr. Ruskin's works are eagerly read. But it is 



192 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

no less true that amongst the very humblest he is 
a power. It is a fact with which Mr. John Morley 
and his friends must reckon, that Mr. Ruskin's 
name would draw a larger and more enthusiastic 
audience in the east end of London than any that 
they could bring forward, and this whatever were 
the subject to be discussed, politics though it were. 
Mr. Ruskin has never laid himself out to attract 
popularity. He began life as a member of the 
Opposition, and he has ever remained an Ishmaelite. 
Nevertheless there are times when men feel drawn 
rather to the wilderness than to the hustings or 
the forum. And if we ask to whom it is that 
Mr. Ruskin looks as his teacher in political and 
social wisdom, no honest reader of his works can 
give any other answer than the name of Thomxas 
Carlyle. For evil and for good Mr. Ruskin has been 
influenced by Carlyle ; for evil, as when the molten 
lava, which poured with such majestic fitness from 
the mouth of the volcanic prophet, is reproduced 
in the angry flame which sometimes plays about 
the flower-like beauty of the artist's words ; for 
good, in the stern sense of righteousness, the 
sympathy with human suffering, the simplicity of 
life and thought, which have redeemed from all 
suspicion of artistic sensuousness or selfishness the 
work of John Ruskin. To be the most eagerly 
read of all serious writers in any age is to wield 
a mighty power, and all the more if the writer's 
message be one of defiance. 

To the same effect, but in far other language, 



The Potters Clay, 193 

does another writer take up the challenge against 
the scientific school. There are some men who 
work with sledge-hammers, others who use vinegar 
to split the rocks. Mr. Matthew Arnold ^^^ does 
not heap terrific denunciations of wrath upon 
Philistinism, but his attack is none the less deadly. 
Very quietly, and with a meaning smile on his face, 
he picks out the weak places in the too conspicuous 
armour of his foe, and plants in them little stinging 
darts of sarcasm and ridicule that rankle and fester 
when a sword thrust would have healed. He does 
not paint in glowing terms the miseries resulting 
from an abuse or a fallacy, but he takes the evil 
thing, strips it quietly of its gaudy clothing, and 
leaves it, naked and ashamed, to slink out of 
sight. He does not disavow the name of Liberal 
which he once professed, but he terms himself 
" a Liberal tempered by experience." It is one 
of the surest signs of success to be abused by 
one's enemies, and this sign has been abundantly 
vouchsafed to Mr. Matthew Arnold. He does not 
write in such a bold hand as Mr. Ruskin, he can 
only be read by those whose sight is comparatively 
keen. But it is the keen-sighted people at whom 
he aims. He knows that the flock has bell- 
wethers, and that if he can move them the rest 
will follow. 

And Mr. Matthew Arnold too, though he may 
not freely admit the fact, is indebted to Carlyle. 

^''^ These pages were written before the lamented death of 
the author of Literature and Dugina. 

13 



194 Thomas Carlylc and John Stnai^t Mill. 

What is liis Culture and Anarchy but a sermon 
on the text of the Latter Day PantpJiIcts, though 
the remedy it suggests may not be such as 
Carlyle would have approved ? Nothing can be 
more unUke than the style of the two men. Yet 
v^ith the very smallest allowance for this difference, 
cannot we fancy these words of the younger 
writer almost an echo of the Sartor? — "To walk 
staunchly by the best light one has, to be strict 
and sincere with oneself, not to be of the number 
of those who say and do not, to be in earnest 
— this is the discipline by which alone man is 
enabled to rescue his life from thraldom to the 
passing moment and to his bodily senses, to en- 
noble it, and to make it eternal."^"" The pessimism 
of Mr. Matthew Arnold's poetic 3'ears has left him 
shy oi all appearance of enthusiasm, yet we feel 
that under his polished exterior there is a tenacity 
of purpose which bears some likeness to the vivid 
energy of the old prophet. And is not his *^ poiver 
tvhicli makes for rig/iteous/iess^^ something very near 
to Carlyle's idea oi^ the Divine force by whose 
ordering Right is also ultimately made Might ? 
Carl3'le defines prayer as " the aspiration of our 
poor struggling, heav3^-laden soul towards its 
Eternal Father;"^"' and Mr. Matthew Arnold, in an 
edition of one of his works published two years 
after this definition oi' Carlyle's was given to the 
world, speaks of prayer as " at bottom nothing else 

*"'' Culture and AnarehVy 3rd edit., Preface, p. xlviii. 
*" Carlyle, First Forty, vol. ii., p. 22. 



The Pollers Clay. 195 

than an energy of aspiration towards the eternal 
iiol ourselves that makes for righteousness."^^'* 

But if we arc not .satisfied with the evidence of 
poets and men of letters, we can turn to testimony 
against which no charge of levity can be brought 
by the severest Benthamite. The author of Ancient 
TLaiv ''" is a writer well qualified by the hardest 
scientific training to understand tlie tendencies of 
modern politics. That work was one of the earliest 
and most successful attempts towards the application 
of Darwinian principles to mental science. Mill 
himself spoke of the book with enthusiasm/^'' and 
the works which have since come from the same pen 
are sufficient to convince even Mr. Herbert Spencer 
that here is one who is not speaking on social 
questions without a previous study of the laws of 
the social organism. And when an author of such 
ripe wisdom and practical experience as Sir Henry 
Maine arrays against a popular institution such a 
formidable series of charges as those advanced 
by his latest work, it is time that the supporters 
of the institution should look to their defences. 
Democracy has thrown down a challenge which has 
not as yet been seriously accepted. It is an attack 
on representative government with the weapons on 
the use of which it is most apt to pride itself. 

And finally, if it be objected to Mr. Ruskin that 

^''^ Litci'aiurc and Dogvia., 3r(l (popular) edit., 1884, p. 32, 
note ; and cf. " A force which is not wc," JJcrocs, \). 8. 

'^" We are passing over new graves. Sir Henry Maine lias 
also gone. 

iw Dissertations, \o\. iv., p. 130. 



196 Thomas Carlyle and John S heart Mill, 

he is a poet, to Mr. Matthew Arnold that he is a 
man of letters, to Sir Henry Maine that he is an 
academic politician, there is still another enemy of 
representative government against whom all such 
charges fail. Sir James Stephen is of all men 
least given to academic crotchets, and he has had 
unrivalled opportunities of judging of the working of 
government, considered in some of its most practical 
aspects. Yet he has written a considerable book 
with the avowed object of combating certain well- 
known political maxims which are really the guiding 
principles of the school to which Mill belonged, 
Libeiiy, Equality, and Fraternity is the deliberate 
attack of an eminently practical man upon a tone 
of thought which characterizes the whole policy of 
the Radical school, and its appearance is the 
more remarkable that upon more than one funda- 
mental conclusion of speculative philosophy its 
author is at one with the leaders of the Mill 
cult. Probably no serious critic would accuse 
Sir James Stephen of vagueness or sentimentalism, 
and his objections to the political philosophy of 
the scientific school certainly do not arise from 
inability to comprehend its methods. The truth is 
that Sir James Stephen possesses a knowledge of 
average human nature which seems to be superior, 
for practical use, to the generalizations of psy- 
chology. Sir James Stephen, be it remarked, is 
an avowed admirer of Carlyle. 

And if we are asked where, in practical affairs, 
is the recoil from laissez-faire and the tendencies 



The Potters Clay. 197 

of the Radical school, we may point simply to two 
very significant facts, the one significant because 
it is the direct reversal of ideas which were 
once successfully advocated by some of the most 
distinguished teachers of that school, the other 
because it was a decision given against the most 
popular political chief of modern times, in the full 
flush of his popularity, just after the achievement 
of a brilliant success. One fact is the total change 
of national feeling with regard to the separation of 
the colonies from the mother-country. The other 
is the flat refusal of the nation to sanction the 
disintegration of the United Kingdom. Both these 
facts are of first-rate importance. 

But this is, after all, only the negative side of 
the new movement. If the old order is to vanish 
we must have something in its place. Are there 
any signs that a creative force is at work ? 

Certainly in one direction, at least, we have done 
something to carry out Carlyle's teaching. We 
have practically given up laissez-faire. We have 
made more than one effort to cure the evil of 
bribery. We have undertaken the education of 
the whole people. We have attempted to secure 
decent dwellings for the poor, and have provided an 
army of officials to watch over the public health. 
We have made employers responsible to their work- 
men for the negligence of those whom the employers 
have selected to work with them. We have made 
some attempt to guard against the building of rotten 
ships and rotten houses. We have declined to 



198 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

allow manufacturers to grind the lives out of their 
workmen simply because the latter are too foolish 
or too weak to care for their own interests. We 
have said that the future of the nation shall not 
be imperilled by the overworking of women and 
children. We have provided recreation-grounds 
for the poor, and have done something to make 
cleanliness a possibility to every child of Adam in 
the land. We have appointed a Public Prosecutor, 
to put a stop to the scandal of unpunished crimes, 
and we have made some effort to guide and guard 
the helpless flock of emigrants who year by year 
leave our shores in search of a land where work 
and bread shall be possible for all. This is little 
enough to boast of, but it hardly falls within the 
limits of laissez-faire. We have ceased to take 
as our ideal " Anarchy plus a street-constable " ; 
we have begun to think of leading men in the way 
of righteousness. We have done enough to rouse 
the wrath and despair of Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
who complains that he is left, like a pelican in the 
wilderness, to mourn over the time when every man 
did that which was right in his own eyes. 

But if the chaos is to become cosmos, there must 
be development as well as order. Are there any 
signs from the huge masses of men and women 
which a century of mechanical advance has gathered 
in the land, that these masses are settling down into 
an harmonious nation, into a civilization in which 
each man shall have his part, and no human 
strength be wasted ? Is there reason to believe 



The Potte^^'s Clay. 199 

that, to borrow a scientific phrase, the social 
blastema will become an organism ? If this is ever 
to be, it must be possible for us to detect some 
traces of incipient organs in the undeveloped mass. 

Everywhere there are signs, small perhaps, but 
significant, that a beginning has been made. There 
iif one phenomenon, which has in other countries 
played a large part in history, and which is destined 
to have a future in England — the working men's 
club. The list of these institutions in England and 
Wales is a document which may well startle those 
who have a nervous horror of any manifestation of 
life among the lower classes. These clubs are no 
hothouse offspring of amiable philanthropy ; there 
are societies and "guilds" enough of that kind. 
But the really important thing is a club which is 
supported and governed solely by those for whose 
interests it exists, and the fidelity with which the 
working-man adheres to his connection with it, the 
indisputable signs of vigour which it manifests, the 
evident determination of its supporters to turn it to 
good account, are amongst the most hopeful, as well 
as the most ominous signs for the future of society. 
All these clubs have a common character, and many 
of them are actually bound together by a definite 
connection. 7'he word which describes the common 
character of these bodies is a word which is often 
misunderstood ; it is a word which, like so many 
other words, is inseparably bound up with a host 
of major and minor prejudices, yet it is a word 
representing an idea without which no permanent 



200 Tko7nas Carlyle and John Shtart Mill, 

settlement of a community can be possible. The 
common characteristic of these bodies is that they 
are socialistic. 

But the incipient organization does not stop with 
its lowest form. Above the small body united for 
social purposes we have larger bodies united for 
economic purposes, and above these again still 
larger organizations for legislative and defensive 
purposes. The experiment which was tried forty 
years ago at Rochdale proved successful, and now 
in many cases the economic wants of the working- 
man are supplied by societies which own no alle- 
giance to capitalist or employer of labour. Much 
experience has been dearly purchased, and the new 
birth has not been achieved without sore pangs, 
but now it stands delivered and ready to grow. 
And in place of the old craft-guilds which the new 
conditions of labour swept away, we have Trades- 
Unions to regulate the relations of labour and 
capital, to weld together the skill and strength of 
scattered masses into an effective power. Mr. 
Herbert Spencer may rail as he likes at Trades- 
Unions, and employers may unite to put them down, 
but it will be in vain. The peril which threatened 
England when a selfish and short-sighted legislation 
attempted to forbid to labouring men what the law 
allowed to all other classes has happily passed away, 
and a wiser spirit prevails. Stretching hands down 
to the single workman in the great factory, and up to 
the vast masses of skilled labour in foreign lands, 
Trades-Unions have become a power in the earth. 



The Potter'' s Clay, 201 

Other causes are co-operating to bring about a 
feeling of unity among the working classes. Im- 
provement in the means of communication renders 
united action possible in a way which could not have 
been imagined in the last century. The collection 
of kindred spirits in the vast model dwellings of 
ISrge towns is leading to a greater homogeneity of 
thought in the artizan world. Even the extension 
of the franchise, lamentably as it fails to correct 
the evil tendencies of political institutions, effects 
a quickening of consciousness through the sense of 
common privileges. The freer speech and thought 
of many who return from the colonies to end their 
days in the old home are a revelation to those 
nursed in old traditions. Looking at the great 
marks of social division in the nation, and excluding 
merely professional organizations, it may be doubted 
whether any class possesses such abundant materials 
for future development as this artizan class. The 
aristocracy has still the remnants of its old tradi- 
tions and instincts, but these have been rudely 
treated in the last fifty years. The great middle- 
class has scarcely anything that can be called a 
rallying-point. Its members are, for the most part, 
ashamed of their station, and eager to climb into 
the ranks of the class above them. 

Is there no application in the teaching of Carlyle 
to these new conditions ? We may be very sure 
that the nascent organism will develop, but it may 
not be so certain that it will develop into a healthy 
and well-toned body. A man who has grown up in 



202 Thomas Carlyle mid John Stuart Mill. 

the midst of opposition and ungenerous criticism, 
who has fought his way, inch by inch, against 
grinding hostility, will prove a sturdy and eminently 
capable character, but he may also turn out to be 
not a little sour and harsh. For want of a little 
sympathy, a little kindly help, the new order may 
grow up hard-hearted and fierce. For want of a 
little knowledge, it may prove bigoted and reac- 
tionary. For want of noble examples and worthy 
objects of worship, it may come to be sordid in 
its aspirations and mean in its achievements. For 
want of a little spiritual enlightenment, it may fail 
to catch the true meaning, the awful wonder and 
significance, the infinite capabilities of life. Laissez- 
faire will not teach these things ; it has had its day, 
and is about to depart. Happily, as yet, an union 
between the old world and the new has not become 
impossible. There may be a little contempt in the 
eyes which the new creation turns upon the dying 
dispensation, perhaps a shade of bitterness ; but, 
happily, as yet, no irreconcilable hatred. But who 
knows when the change may come ? It is not with 
futile attempts at repression, not with disdainful 
standing aloof, not with supercilious interference, 
that the departing age must welcome the struggles 
towards the light of the coming order. But by true 
sympathy, by unaffected sharing of the stores of 
the past amongst those whose strength lies in the 
future, by the pointing to great ideals, by the 
example in word and deed of a true reverence for 
all men noble and all things worthy, that the new 



The Potter s Clay. • 203 

crisis must be brought to end in victory. Without 
selfish regret for its own departed glories, with no 
unworthy craving for the prizes of the new epoch, 
but with an earnest desire for the perpetual triumph 
of truth and justice, with true brotherly and loyal 
affection, must the dying monarch welcome the 
steps of his successor. It is the common lot. 
Why should he repine ? Now, as it has ever 
been — 

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 

And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the Vx^orld. 

Of the nature and qualities of the new age we 
need not attempt to prophesy too^ minutely. But of 
one thing all omens assure us. The genius of the 
new world will not be glory, nor beauty, nor even 
knowledge, but work. Glory and beauty and know- 
ledge will be there, but they will be grouped around 
the central figure ; on the banner of the nation will 
be inscribed this device, '* Work, for the night cometh,^^ 
and in place of spear and sword will be seen the 
mason's hammer and the student's pen. Men have 
found out that the reward of labour is inexhaustible ; 
that the bottom of each mine of discovery opens into 
a still lower depth of riches. But the work will be 
for its own sake, not for the rewards which it brings ; 
it will be duty, not covetousness, which nerves the 
worker's arm. And as all faiths must have their 
prophets, so long as the souls of men can be stirred 
by the voice of one who sees clearly what they feel 
dimly, who has stood in the Holy of Holies while 



204 Thomas Carlyle and John S heart Mill, 

they have been waiting in the outer court, who has 
dimbed the mount and been hidden in the storm, so 
long will the Gospel of Work have its prophets and 
heroes. And when we look around for the prophets 
of the new faith, whom shall we find more fitted to 
bear aloft the sacred banner than him who raised it 
amid the jeers and contempt of a generation brought 
up in Egyptian slavery, who refused to bow the knee 
to the gods of the heathen when all around him were 
prostrate in adoration, who has sung the marching 
music of the new era in tones that vibrate to the 
very hearts of those who hear them — whom with 
higher claims than Thomas Carlyle ? 



CHAPTER V. 

PARERGA. 

A FEW words will suffice to add to our former 
accounts of Carlyle and Mill a short notice of 
the works which they produced beyond those already 
referred to. There is, of course, no logical distinction 
between the productions before discussed and those 
which we have now to consider. The minds of both 
Carlyle and Mill were distinctly ^' of a piece "; when 
we have once grasped the idea of each there is no 
difficulty in seeing how all their achievements are 
the natural results of its working. But the diffidence 
of an inferior critic prefers to deal with the spirit 
and principal figures of his picture as themselves the 
primary subjects of his task, rather than, by attempt- 
ing to include the whole canvas in one description, 
to run the risk of losing his coherency in a multitude 
of details. 

There are, again, some events in the history of the 
two men of which it is evidently impossible for an 
ordinary writer to give any account. Mill was for 
thirty-five years in the service of the East India 
Company, and though we may be perfectly sure that 



2o6 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

in this capacity his conduct was influenced by the 
same admirable quaHties as those which distinguished 
his pubUc life, we naturally find little record of his 
labours beyond the general testimony of his official 
superiors to his worth. His employment in the 
India Office is, however, interesting on two grounds. 
In the first place it is an illustration of the fact that 
a large amount of varied and valuable intellectual 
work may be produced by men who are obliged by 
the force of circumstances to do routine duty. It 
does not appear that Mill went so far as Coleridge 
and Lamb in recommending some sublunary pursuit 
as a positive help towards higher culture, although 
he " found office duties an actual rest from other 
mental occupations." ^^^ The perpetually recurring 
claims of routine work must necessarily limit the 
amount of observation and reading which an inductive 
philosopher ought to do, and the mental rest required 
by the severe labours of classification and formula- 
tion of laws may very well be obtained from the 
latter source, or from the still better occupation of 
out-door exercise. It is fairly certain that Gibbon 
would never have written his great history had his 
means not allowed him to make it his sole task for 
many years. And we may be sure that Spinoza 
would not have taken to grinding lenses had not the 
necessities of his position compelled him. The great 
advantage of an independent occupation is that it 
enables an author to be perfectly unbiassed by 
sordid motives in his writings. And if a man whose 
^^1 Autobiography, p. 83. 



Parerga. 207 

routine duties demand a large share of his daily life 
have sufficient energy to turn steadily to intellectual 
pursuits as an addition to his occupations, it may be 
assumed with some probability that the work he 
produces in the latter sphere will not be without 
merit. But if a man has not the moral strength to 
iTeep himself from anarchy or idleness without the 
perpetual corrective of a bread-winning occupation, 
he is hardly worthy to aspire to the ranks of litera- 
ture or science. And, however small the pittance 
be, if a man has wherewith to pay his way, he had 
better avoid altogether the maelstrom of Mammon- 
worship, in which so many noble intellects have 
perished. 

But Mill's connection with the India Office is also 
interesting as the probable cause of an important 
chapter of his political philosophy. Whilst he held 
the absolute suitability of the representative system 
to nearly all European countries, and to all the 
English-speaking colonies and dependencies, he 
denied that it was applicable to oriental countries, 
such as India, or that such possessions could be 
advantageously administered by a Parliamentary 
Government at all. The most scientific persons are 
liable to bias, and just as we refuse to accept as 
objective truth Mill's estimate of his wife's intellectual 
qualities, so do we refuse to assume the fundamental 
distinction in point of civilization between the 
Australian Bush colonists and the native Indian 
nationalities which Mill saw. Undoubtedly it is 
true that the virtue of a form of government depends, 



2o8 Thomas Carlyle and Jo hi Stuart Mill, 

not on an absolute ideal standard, but on the condi- 
tion of the people to whom it is to be applied. And 
undoubtedly it is true that Mill has made out a very 
strong case for the merits of representative govern- 
ment under certain conditions. But the point in 
which he seems to fail is the proof that in her pre- 
sent condition of development England is really fit 
for representative government. And a very strong 
reason for requiring this proof is to be found in 
the passage in which he combats the application of 
Representative principles to India.^^"^ It need hardly 
be pointed out that, although Mill spoke on Indian 
affairs with great knowledge, yet he is obliged in his 
argument to resort at least once to mere dogma. 
" The government of a people by itself has a meaning 
and a reality ; but such a thing as government of 
one people by another does not and cannot exist." ^^^ 
To a mind unacquainted with the peculiar form of 
reasoning by which the advocates of a representa- 
tive system satisfy themselves that a man can be 
both governor and governed, this statement will seem 
to need complete reversal. 

Of Mill's appearance in the House of Commons 
we have already spoken. All the circumstances 
connected with it were eminently honourable to him, 
and it cannot be doubted that his example in such 
an atmosphere must have done good. Neverthe- 
less, it may well be questioned whether he did any- 
thing in Parliament which he could not as well, or 

^s- Rep7^esentative Govenmient^ pp. 325 — 340. 
1S3 Ibid., p. 325. 



Parei'ga. 209 

better, have done outside it. He already commanded 
a wider public than that of the House of Commons ; 
it is doubtful whether even the reports of his speeches 
extended his influence. And he certainly was never 
born to sway an audience by the power of his 
oratory. Had he been re-elected, his strong sense 
Cf duty would probably have led him to waste his 
matured powers in committees and other processes, 
capable of being dealt with by far inferior men. His 
appearance is a noteworthy testimony to the fact 
that a popular constituenc}^ could in the year 1865 
elect a man of high moral and intellectual worth as 
its representative. But it deserves also to be remem- 
bered that, upon the enlargement of the constituency 
by an Act of Parliament which he had himself 
supported, Mill was rejected. 

Under the head of parerga come naturally to be 
considered the minor writings of an author who has 
produced also systematic works. Besides the editions 
of Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence and James 
Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mindy 
both works of first-rate scientific importance, Mill 
wrote a great number of articles for the various 
periodicals with which he was connected. Four 
volumes of these contributions were collected and 
published by their author under the title of Disserta- 
tions and Discussions, and now remain as evidence 
of his industry and the scope of his learning. Of 
these essays it may fairly be said that, while they 
must have been excellent as magazine articles, they 
are hardly calculated to be of permanent value as 

14 



2IO Thomas Carlyle and John Shiart Mill. 

isolated works. In the first-place they do not, as 
a rule, deal with subjects of first-rate importance. 
Students who are sufficiently interested in scientific 
pursuits to be desirous of knowing about the topics 
of which they treat will naturally go to the originals 
for their knowledge, while the casual reader^ will 
hardly be sufficiently interested by the subjects to 
attack Mill's articles. Michelet, and De Tocqueville, 
and Whewell, and Bain, and Carrel, and Guizot, are 
all men whose works are known to students, but the 
world at large will not care very much about them ; 
they were none of them epoch-making men in any 
large sense of the term. 

And again, Mill's way of dealing with his subjects 
is much more suited to the exigencies of an ephemeral 
publication than to the needs of permanent works. 
H'e very rarely gives his matter a human interest by 
introducing into it a biographical sketch. In the 
essay on Berkeley's works, for example, where he 
has a truly great figure to deal with, he mentions 
only one fact in his author's history, and that in 
a merely detached way. In such a place a critic like 
Bagehot would have given us a lively portrait of a 
man who is really far less known than he deserves 
to be. Those who are acquainted with Bagehot's 
essay on another great episcopal figure. Bishop 
Butler, will at once appreciate the superiority of 
the later production regarded as a permanent work. 
Mill's object appears to be so exclusively directed 
towards making known the merits of a particular 
publication, that there is almost a suspicion of book- 



Pa7^erga, 2 1 1 

seller about his criticism. He is anxious that the 
work under review shall sell, and so he brings 
out the most attractive portions of it ; or else he 
deals with the subject polemically, and the matter 
becomes one of scientific argument, in which the 
public can hardly be expected to take much interest. 
Where an author feels himself strong enough for the 
task, there is much to be said in favour of Macaulay's 
celebrated method of dealing with the biographer of 
Warren Hastings. When we turn over the pages 
of a volume of collected essays, a gallery of complete 
portraits should pass before us ; if in the gallery we 
find strange faces, and especially strange faces which 
recall well-known names, so much the better. We 
have added to our stock of knowledge, and the com- 
fortable conceit of our judgments has received a shock; 
each of which occurrences is very good for us. But 
it is a trifle wearisome to behold an author going 
through a series of embraces or duels, in most of 
vv^hich the other party to the engagement is hidden 
from view. 

We have said that the Dissertations are principally 
concerned with scientific subjects, and this is evident 
at a glance. Even the essay on Coleridge cannot 
be excepted from this criticism. But there are two 
articles which are especially interesting, as being 
almost the sole surviving attempts of their author in 
the province of pure literature. It will be remem- 
bered that, after abandoning his first out-and-out 
Benthamism, Mill turned with some success to the 
study of poetry, and ever afterwards insisted on the 



2 1 2 Tho7nas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

value of it as a mental stimulus. Unfortunately, it 
is quite clear, from a perusal of these two essays, 
that he had no real appreciation of poetry. In the 
first, that entitled Thoughts on Poetry audits Varieties y 
he does undoubtedly say one fine thing, though 
possibly the thought is finer than its appropriateness. 
" Eloquence is heard, poetry is o^^rheard." ^^* If by 
this aphorism Mill means to imply that true poetry 
is never concerned with producing an immediate 
impression, then undoubtedly nothing could be truer 
or more apt than his criticism. But apparently he 
means more than this. For he everywhere insists, 
throughout the essays, on the subjectiveness of poetry. 
'' The poetry is not in the object itself, nor in the 
scientific truth itself, but in the state of mind in 
which the one and the other maybe contemplated." ^^^ 
This is the real groundwork of all Mill's theory, and 
it leads him to strange results. It makes him deny 
spontaneousness and lyrical power to Wordsworth, 
the author of The Highland Reaper] it makes him 
regard the poet as the essential opposite of the 
man of action, whereas the ver}'' greatest poets, 
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Milton, Goethe, 
have been eminently men of action ; it leads him 
to the paradox that '^ one may write genuine poetry, 
and not be a poet,"^^'' and it finally brings him to the 
thoroughly characteristic conclusion that Nascitur 
Poeta is an antiquated prejudice. He does not 

^^^ Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i., p. 71- 
185 Ibid., p. 69. 
18^ Ibid.^ p. 79. 



Parerga. 2 1 3 

actually affirm that a poet may be produced by 
a suitable system of education, but he throws out 
strong hints in that direction.^^^ It is quite clear that 
whatever Mill may have thought of the attractiveness 
or the utility of poetry, he did not believe in its 
truth, in any high sense of the word. He expressly 
' denies that poetry addresses itself to the belief.^'^ In 
fact, he sums up his definition "in Hmiting poetry to 
the delineation of the states of feeling, and denying 
the name where nothing is deUneated but outward 
objects." ^^^ If Mill had applied his own philosophy 
of induction to the subject of poetry, he would have 
found that while the feature which he predicates as 
the poetic essential is indeed painfully prominent in 
a certain school of poets which was in the ascendant 
when he wrote, the characteristic is entirely hidden 
in those whom the world has agreed to call its 
master-singers. 

It is not to be supposed that, in assigning to 
poetry a subjective character, Mill meant to bring in 
the whole of philosophic speculation by a side wind. 
He spoke merely of mental altitudes as ordinarily 
understood. Whether an objective world exists or 
not, it is certain that the great poets write as though 
they believed it did. And so we may usefully 
contrast with Mill's view of poetry the definition 
given by Carlyle, also without any metaphysical 
intent. ''The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies; 

157 Dissertations and Discussions^ vol. i., p. 88. 

188 Ibid., p. 64. 

189 Ibid'., p. 68. 



214 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

it was the feeling they had of the inner structure of 
Nature; that the soul of all her voices and utterances 
was perfect music. Poetry therefore we will call 
musical Thought. The Poet is he who thinks in that 
manner. At bottom it turns still on power of in- 
tellect ; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision 
that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you 
see music ; the heart of Nature being everywhere 
music, if you can only reach it." ^^° The contrast 
is plain; with Mill poetry is subjective, individual 
truth: with Carlyle, it is objective, universal truth. 
And it is not a little wonderful that Carlyle's 
view of music, which seems so defiantly tran- 
scendental, has already been strengthened as a 
scientific theory by Wagner's celebrated essay on 
Beethoven. 

Those who desire to see Mill's theory brought 
into practical use as the groundwork of criticism, 
may read his essay on the Writings of Alfred de 
Vigny, where the actual poet is accounted for in the 
most satisfactory way, and where the ideal poet is 
represented as sitting down to ask himself, before he 
writes, ''whether it were for the good of humanity 
at the particular era that Conservative or Radical 
feeling should most predominate." ^^^ Evidently Mill 
did not grasp the truth that a real poet has no choice 
in what he produces, and looks only to his work and 
not to its effects. 

190 Heroes, p. 78. 

191 Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i., p. 294. 



Parerga. 2 1 5 

Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt, 
Der in den Zweigen vvohnet ; 
Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt, 
1st Lohn, der reichlich lohnet. 

Or as Tennyson has it — 

I do but sing because I must, 
* And pipe but as the linnets sing. 

If, on the other hand, we turn to Carlyle's minor 
productions, we find a body of work not merely of 
sterling merit, but of perpetual interest. The Life 
of Schiller, the Wilhelm Meister, and the essays on 
various branches of German literature, with the short 
translations from the Romance writers, form an early 
cycle of Carlyle's productions which accomplished 
the important task of making English readers 
acquainted with the treasures of German literature. 
Everybody now learns German, and can afford to 
despise translations. But how much of this happy 
result is due to Carlyle ? In the early days of the 
century all people who desired to be thought accom- 
plished professed an acquaintance with French. If 
the long war had done nothing else, it had at least 
made French almost an essential for thousands of 
people. But to know German was a rare accom- 
plishment, and one which was occasionally looked 
upon with suspicion. Shortly before Carlyle began 
to write, Hannah More had lifted up the apron of 
virtuous alarm against the threatened '' irruption 
of those swarms of publications now daily issuing 
from the banks of the Danube, which, like their 
ravaging predecessors of the darker ages, though 



2 1 6 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

with far other and more fatal arms, are overrunning 
civilized society." Hannah More's enthusiasm for 
moral virtue has more than once led her into strange 
positions, but surely the authoress of The Shepherd 
of Salisbury Plain hardly ever appears in a stranger 
light than when holding back w^ith one mighty arm 
the invasion of a Schiller, a Richter, and a Novalis, 
while with the other she welcomes the correct 
classical writers of the French school. 

Like most persons who can see beyond the limited 
range of ordinary human vision, Carlyle had to bear 
w4th strong opposition from self-constituted advisers. 
Jeffrey, then the presiding genius of the great critical 
organ of the day, laughed his German divinities to 
scorn, and prophesied fearlessly that no one would 
ever care to believe in them. De Quincey spoke of 
Goethe, Carlyle's great inspirer, in terms too coarse 
to be repeated. All the Benthamite school, scarcely 
even excepting Mill himself, despised German philo- 
sophy and German literature as '' mystical." Yet 
Carlyle persevered, with the result that, mainly 
owing to his efforts, Faust, and Wallenstein, and 
Minna von Barnhelm are now familiar in translations 
or originals to every member of the reading public. 
Had he done nothing else, Carlyle would have been 
entitled to an honourable place in English literature 
as the revealer of the treasures of Germany. 

But he did a very great deal more. The three 
latter volumes of the Miscellanies are a cabinet of 
the most brilliant jewels, each complete in itself. 
Carlyle never assumes knowledge in his readers, 



Pai'erga. 217 

though he never insults them by forcing upon their 
notice things which they already know. He has a 
rare gift of steering clear between patronage and 
flattery. And what a perfect string of cameos he 
has given us in Boswell, and Mirabeau, and Dr. 
Francia^ and Heyne, and Count Cagliostro, and 
'Voltaire. Each figure stands out before us clear 
and complete, birth, parents, fortune, circumstances, 
all distinctly legible, outlined against the most 
delightful setting of anecdote and observation. 
Sometimes his subjects are well-known names, and 
then Carlyle has to combat old prejudices, nearly 
always succeeding in proving to his reader that 
they are prejudices. In other cases he is dealing 
with figures less familiar to the public eye, and then 
he is careful to create a distinct and living portrait. 
When he has a story to tell, he is absolutely 
unrivalled. In the opening pages of The Diamond 
Necklace he implicitly undertakes to show that truth 
is more interesting than fiction, and amply does he 
redeem his promise. The wildest of Hans Andersen's 
tales does not surpass in daring this historical sketch 
of events which actually happened just a hundred 
years ago. The same gift of dramatic power, for 
such it really is, may be seen too in the story from 
German history. The Prinzenraub. From Mexico to 
Russia his mind seems to travel with perfect ease ; 
he reads the characters of men as clearly when they 
are engaged in quelling one revolution in Paraguay, 
as when they are busy fomenting another in 
St. Petersburg. 



2 1 8 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

The crowning triumph of Carlyle's minor works 
is, and will remain, his Life of Sterling. His subject 
was one of great difficulty. Sterling was a man 
endeared to all who knew him by an indefinable 
sweetness of character, and an equally indefinable 
halo of promise. The permanent work which he did 
amounted to practically nothing. His biographer 
had to delineate a character entirely spiritual, never 
reduced into form by concrete action. All men who 
knew Sterling loved him, and all were convinced 
that he had great things in him. Unfortunately he, 
like Clough and Amiel, died before his possibilities 
became performances. There was no room here 
for the mere compiling biographer, the Boswell or 
the Forster. Such men are useful as dictionaries 
to the lives of long-lived and completed geniuses, 
such as Johnson and Landor, but they would find 
no scope in the case of a man like Sterling. From 
their works the reader has to create the portrait for 
himself, and, unfortunately, the materials of Sterling's 
life were only recognizable by those who actually 
knew him. He needed for his biographer a man 
of genius, and may be regarded as supremely 
fortunate in finding him. It is entirely certain that, 
but for Carlyle's book, the memory of Sterling would 
have been completely lost by this time. There is 
nothing of him that would survive in dictionaries. 
Author o^ Strafford \s all that could be said about him 
in such compilations, and who now reads Strafford ? 
It is a common remark that the men who really make 
life pleasant and noble for us are soon lost to fame, 



Parerga. 219 

while the memories which survive are those whose 
influence we do not recognize. Carlyle has arrested 
one of these human figures in its flight towards the 
land of darkness, and made it immortal. 

Before passing on to the last item in our list we 
may just cast a passing glance at another benefit for 
Which, if Mr. Froude's account be correct, we are 
indebted to Carlyle. This is the institution known 
as " The London Library," in St. James's Square. 
In 1840 there was no reading-room at the British 
Museum and no Guildhall Free Library, while the 
ordinary *' circulating libraries " could hardly be 
expected to satisfy the wants of serious readers. 
Even to this day the " London Library," as a 
storehouse of good books which can be borrowed 
and taken away, is a great boon ; in the days when 
it was first started it must have been of priceless 
value. And, if we are to believe Mr. Froude, its 
foundation was . due to the energy of Carlyle. 
Unfortunately, his biographer does not produce any 
testimony to the truth of his assertion, and it is not, 
perhaps, surprising that the credit of the enterprise 
should be given, in the popular estimation, to the 
chairman of the meeting at which the plan was finally 
determined on. At the same time, no one who has 
studied Carlyle's character with any care will say 
that this was a thing beyond his powers. Trans- 
cendental and imaginative as he was, no man of the 
world ever managed his business affairs with more 
shrewdness and success, of course within the lines 
peremptorily drawn by his sense of right and wrong. 



2 20 Tho7nas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

Where he could satisfy himself that the object was 
entirely worthy, few men could achieve it wdth more 
complete certainty than Carlyle. 

It now remains only to speak of one very large 
item of work which Carlyle accomplished, in addition 
to the labours already touched upon. This is, of 
course, his historical productions. And as it is by 
these, perhaps even more than by his other writings, 
that he is known to the greater world of European 
thought, it may be worth while to ascertain the view 
which he took of the province of the historian. And 
this is the more necessary that Mill also took a very 
decided interest in the subject, and, as we have seen, 
has left some interesting thoughts about it, though 
he never achieved anything as an illustration of his 
views. 

Carlyle's ideal of history was the history which 
appears in the Old Testament. The historical books 
of the Bible were written by men who saw in the 
events which befell individuals and nations the 
workings of a Divine Providence, rewarding the 
good and punishing the evil. 

" In the three and twentieth year of Joash the son of 
Ahaziah King of Judah, Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to 
reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned seventeen years. 

" And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, 
and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which 
made Israel to sin ; he departed not therefrom. 

"And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, 
and He delivered them into the hand of Hazael King of 
Syria, and into the hand of Ben-hadad the son of Hazael, 
all their days.''^^^ 



192 



2 Kings xiii. 1-3. 



Pai^erga. 221 

This is an example of the way in which history 
presented itself to the Hebrew prophets, and this 
was the view Carlyle took of it. The simple '' did 
evil in the sight of the Lord/' which satisfied the 
minds of primitive men, would have, of course, to be 
expanded into a narrative of greater detail. But in 
the ethical tone of the Bible history Carlyle found 
what he sought in vain in other records of the past. 
, In the view that he took, the history of Israel was 
only more valuable than the history of any other 
nation, by virtue of the fact that it was incomparably 
better written. For Carlyle, the God who ruled in 
Palestine ruled also in England, and by the same 
laws of justice. Consequently, the events of English 
history were just as truly evidences of the working 
of Divine justice as the events of Jewish history, 
and they would be, if properly interpreted, far more 
impressive to English minds, as being naturally more 
interesting and familiar. 

But the important fact was that whereas the history 
of Israel was written by a Moses and a Samuel, men 
whose whole souls were filled with the overpowering 
sense of the nearness and majesty of God, who judged 
every event by its relationship with the laws of 
righteousness, who were gifted with piercing insight 
and absorbing enthusiasm for their subject, who were^ 
in a word, inspired, — the history of England was 
written by men like Hume and Macaulay, who saw 
only in the fate of nations the proof or disproof of 
certain small political theories, or by mere chroniclers 
like Stow and Holinshed. 



2 2 2 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

The true function of the historian then is, 
''interpreting the mysterious ways of Divine Pro- 
vidence in this Universe," ^^^ or turning over the 
pages of the " grand sacred Epos, or Bible of World- 
History ; infinite in meaning as the Divine Mind it 
emblems ; wherein he is wise that can read here a 
line and there a line." ^^* 

Of course it will readily be objected that this is 
a task the complete fulfilment of which is beyond 
human powers. And Carlyle was not the man to 
shirk this obvious difficulty. He points it out very 
forcibly in several passages, from one of which we 
may extract a line or two. 

" The most gifted man can observe, still more can record, 
only the series of his own impressions ; his observation, 
therefore, to say nothing of its other imperfections, must be 
successive, while the things done were often si??ttiltaneotcs ; 
the things done were not a series, but a group. . . . Narrative 
is linea?% Action is solid. . . . Truly if History is Philosophy 
teaching by Experience, the writer fitted to compose History 
is hitherto an unknown man. The Experience itself would 
require All-Knowledge to record it, — were the All-wisdom 
needful for such Philosophy as would interpret it to be had 
for the asking." ^^^ 

It is evident then that Carlyle saw, as clearly as 
his scientific contemporaries, the impossibility of 
dealing, en masse, with the infinity of circumstances 
of which the shortest period of history is really 
composed, and equally clear that he saw the necessity 
of finding central points upon which the web of 
history could be hung. 

193 Friediich, vol. i., p. 143. 

^^^ Cagliostro, " Miscellanies," vol. v., p. 65. 

^^^ O/i History, "Miscellanies, '"vol. iv., pp. 257, 258. 



Parerga. 223 

But he differed entirely from the scientific school 
in his choice of these points. We have seen that 
Mill took for his guide " the state of the intellectual 
faculties of mankind," as being ''the main determining 
cause of the social progress." ^'^^ Carlyle preferred to 
leave the doubtful theory implied in the word progress 
0iit of sight altogether. As a transcendentalist he 
recognised the existence of an internal as well as an 
external world, and it seemed to him that the record 
of the internal world, as translated by the actions of 
great men, was a surer guide than scientific specula- 
tion to the mysteries of the. universe. Great men 
appeared to him to be the dominating influences by 
which the colour was given to a period, of all the 
forces at work infinitely the most powerful, and, 
what was practically important, infinitely the most 
evident and describable. Whatever might be the 
ulterior influences acting on man himself, every act 
and every thought which had shaped the current of 
the world's history had come finally from the hand 
or brain of a human being, and further than this, in 
the way of scientific enquiry, it did not seem to him 
possible to go. This had been his earliest faith. 
" Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) 
texts of that Divine Book of Revelations, whereof 
a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by 
some named History." ^'^^ And he still clung to it as 
time went on. " What is the Bible of a nation, the 
practically-credited God's message to a nation ? Is 

^^^ Logic, book vi., cap. x., § 7. Atite, p. 154. 
^^^ Sartor, p. 122. 



2 24 Thomas Carlyle and JoJm Stttart Mill. 

it not, beyond all else, the authentic Biography of its 
Heroic Souls ? " ^^^ It seemed to him that the Stuarts 
came back not because the reign of Puritanism had 
reached the limit of its capabilities, but because 
Cromwell was dead and there was no one to take 
his place ; that the disastrous collapse of Prussia at 
the end of the eighteenth century was the natural 
result of the change from Fried rich the Great to 
Friedrich Wilhelm II., and its subsequent revival due 
to the devoted efforts of such men as the Humboldts, 
Hardenberg, and Stein. And so history came to 
mean to him '^ the essence of innumerable biogra- 
phies." ^'^ 

This method of writing history gave scope to 
one of Carlyle's most conspicuous gifts, his power of 
imagination. The view which Mill regarded as the 
highest aspect of historical writing, in which " the 
whole of the events which have befallen the human 
race, and the states through which it has passed, 
are regarded as a series of phenomena, produced 
by causes, and susceptible of explanation," "^"^ affords 
little scope for the peculiar gift of imaginative genius. 
And accordingly we find Mill placing the Carlylese 
method in the second rank only,^^^ and inclining to 
doubt the value of Michelet's historical imagination. ^'^^ 
But in dealing with other men of genius the man of 

13^ Latter Day Pamphlets, p. 239. 
i'« On History, "Miscellanies," vol. ii., p. 255. 
2«" Mlclielefs History of France ^ "Dissertations and Discus- 
sions," vol. ii., p. 129. 
2«i Ibid., p. 128. 
2"3 Ibid., p. 142. ^ 



Parerga. 225 

genius finds himself in the society of those whom 
he understands and reahzes. Where the records are 
deficient, he can fill up the blanks from his own con- 
viction of what the hero's mind mual have been, he can 
detect inconsistencies in the accounts of great men 
written by small men who. are entirely incapable of 
appreciating their greatness, he can give his narrative 
a life and reasonableness which make it differ from 
the scraggy collections of mere compilers, as the full 
action of the stage differs from the ghastly rigidity of 
the property-room. Instead of showing why things 
happened, or what, things ought to have happened, 
he draws a living picture of what actually ^/^ happen ; 
he plays the part, not of the anatomist, but of the 
creator, by whose breath the dry bones are made 
to live. 

But just as the great artist derives strength and 
certainty from his studies of anatomy and the laws 
of perspective, so does the literary historian guard 
against error by a most assiduous study of the driest 
records. It would be a fatal mistake to suppose thc.t 
Carlyle substituted imagination for industry in his 
historical work. " Faithful Genius at the top and 
faithful Industry at the bottom " ^"'^ was his idea of a 
preparation for the writing of history. And he had 
himself to supply both qualities, for, unhappily, he 
found no decent industry in the records he had to 
deal with. It is of course competent for no one who 
has not been over the same ground to pronounce 
decidedly whether Carlyle has actually examined 
203 Frieda ich^ vol. i., p. 17. 

15 



2 26 Thomas Carlyle and John Shear t Mill. 

every nook and corner of it, but so far as we can 
judge by results, he was not one to shrink from the 
most exhausting labour. In the French Revolution the 
traces of the spade and pickaxe are not so numerous 
as in Cromwell and Friedrich, but in the latter Carlyle 
appears to have known everything that was generally 
known in his time, and to have discovered or guessed 
much that has since been brought to light. The very 
criticism that is now made in Germany on Friedrich 
is, that it is so loaded with evidences of detailed 
knowledge as to put almost too great a strain upon 
the minds of its careful readers. 

These ideas Carlyle carried out in his historical 
writings. Everywhere it is the figures of men 
around which the action groups itself; men are 
the links in the chain of causation which binds the 
drama together. Even in the most famous incidents 
it is the actors that claim the chief share of our 
attention. 

And what a wonderful result it is. The French 
Revolution is a thing absolutely unique. We read it 
again and again, and find that here is the thing going 
on before our eyes. There is very little theory in 
the book beyond the one great theory that Heaven 
is taking vengeance for the sins of centuries, that 
a society rotten to the very heart must eventually 
fall with a crash. For the rest, Carlyle seems too 
entirely absorbed in the dramatic interest of the 
scene to be anxious about doctrines. He is dealing 
with men whom he thoroughly understands, and 
seems no more desirous of showing why such events 



Parerga. 227 

happened than he would be of discussing the causes 
of hunger. The boolc achieves Carlyle's own highest 
ambition, the reconcilement of the ideal and the 
actual. With all the fascination of a romance, it has 
all the literalness of a police-court record. 

Still more do the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell 
Constitute the study of a great man. Here the 
author's place is reduced to that of an editor and 
commentator, and in this department Carlyle has 
proved himself admirable. The subject was one 
which excited great interest throughout the countr}^, 
and there was every opportunity for criticism. The 
descendants of the men among whom Cromwell lived 
and moved were still, in many cases, living in the 
homes of their ancestors, with unbroken traditions of 
the past, and ample ability to ferret out documentary 
evidence. Yet, as Carlyle could say with pardonable 
pride in later editions, nothing was produced which 
could in the least alter the main outlines of his 
picture, nor, in fact, anything that demanded material 
alteration in the original work. The book turned 
the already wavering current into a new channel. 
People had begun to suspect that this man Cromwell, 
who rose from the position of a small country squire 
to rule the three kingdoms, under whose government 
England was glorious in peace and successful in war, 
who laid the foundation of her commercial greatness, 
and who never lost a battle in which he commanded, 
could not quite be the shallow hypocrite which the 
Restoration histories made him out to be. Carlyle's 
Lectures on Heroes had been a word in season, and 



228 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

now this book, with its first-hand evidence and its 
careful commentary, put the finishing stroke to the 
work, and estabHshed Cromwell in his true position. 
A great deal of the labour which the editor had to 
perform hardly appears in his pages. It consisted 
in collecting, from the various sources in which they 
were imbedded, the documents which formed the 
substance of the work, in comparing discrepant 
reports and copies, and in testing the genuineness 
of doubtful cases In this book Carlyle keeps him- 
self more in the background than is usual with him. 
He worked with a sincere admiration for the great 
man whose words he was recording, and he took a 
disinterested delight in the success of his efforts. 
As a real key to the position of affairs in a period 
which has been so frequently distorted by party 
prejudice, the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell is 
invaluable. 

But it is on his Friedrick of Prussia that Carlyle's 
fame as a historian will ultimately rest. It is 
difficult to trace exactly the attraction which led him 
to the subject, except it were the conspicuous part 
played by Friedrich in European affairs. For the 
Great King had been deaf to the claims of German 
Literature, he had none of the enthusiasm for 
righteousness which had drawn Carlyle towards 
Cromwell, he was not, in the highest sense of the 
word, a hero, nor does Carlyle ever treat him as such. 
The subject too was fraught with almost insurmount- 
able difficulties for an English author. Nearly all 
the authorities were in a most repulsive condition, 



Pa7^erga. 229 

oceans of official German prolixity. It was necessary 
for Carlyle, who hated travelling, to visit per- 
sonally the scenes of battles, and there was no 
particular reason to suppose that the people of 
England would be very anxious to hear about 
» man who belonged to a departed era, and 
about whom Englishmen had never been specially 
enthusiastic. Chatham had been the one English 
statesman who had seen Friedrich's merit, and 
his support had been given in the face of much 
opposition. 

Nevertheless Carlyle did begin the work, and did 
also complete it, in ten substantial volumes. The 
reserve of power which could carry through such a 
task as this without sign of flagging, must have been 
enormous. For whatever else may be said of the 
book, it is indisputable that the interest never wavers 
from beginning to end. With all its length there is 
no suspicion of padding, everything that appears is 
necessary for the development of the story, or at least 
hangs naturally by it. Many a man who has taken 
up the first volume, with the intention of reading no 
farther, has found himself unable to lay the book aside. 
Like all good story-tellers, Carlyle " begins at the 
beginning," and carries us forward by huge strides, 
but always stopping at the right places, from the cap- 
ture of Brannibor by Henry the Fowler in the tenth 
century to the beginning of the reign of Friedrich 
Wilhelm the First. There he becomes more minute, 
evidently considering that the work of so forcible a 
mind as that of Friedrich Wilhelm was of first-rate 



230 T/iomas Car/yh and John Stuart l\TilL 

importance in shaping tlu> (MwiromiuMit til" his snr- 
cessoi". Thr poftrail (»!" l''ri(*(h'irh W'iUu Im !>; one 
of tht' u\(>st vivitl historical skctclus rxlaul. '\\\v 
pictuit" of the vi^ofous, prartioal, aiul conscientious, 
but si>nu^\vhat uniMtt^llt^ctunl niul choltM'ic king, will 
never he ror<;ot((M» hy lh(»S(* who have studied it. 
'J'he (l»stription oi' {"'riediich Wilhehu's l\\ba^h\ lU" 
itdorm.il council, is a n\ar\< Ihuis elVort ^^^ lunuorous 
iuiagination. We have (irumkow, and Seiktndorf, 
and tlu* PcssautM', \.\\\k\ other uld-world hnt onc(* 
iuipoitani lic,ures, e«>n|nied into lile aj;.iin, tni;<lhrr 
with siicli ;dto!;(lh(r minor piippd'. .r. ( luntlling and 
Fassiuann. 

When he comes to his actual sid>ject the anlhnr 
still u\aintains his hi};h level ol' e\C(>llenct\ Who 
cls(* has .so ilt.nly and succinc^tlv slated the lamons 
case of tlie (|naii«ls hetween I'Viedrich and X'oltairc? 
Whore is \\\v history of a soldier's rdgn written with 
as much insij;ht ami eorn^tness as in the account of 
Frieihich's campaigns ? It is especially to he notic(Ml 
that CarlyK^ never falls into the inviting erroi- of 
describing a battle hy raphiK-;. In <"\'ery CJist* W(> aic 
shown th(- exact plan loinicd, (he .';ncc(\ss or failure 
of the man(eu\re, and we lake .1 .iMrtaloTs inlcK^st 
in the drama befon" us. Inil (Ikk is nolhini; of the 
newspai^er correspondent in th(> de^;cI iplion. We 
are at Hrst perusal inclined to tiiiid; iliat ih(« battles 

OCCUj^y t(>t» nnuh of the wcik, tliat too httic loom irt 
\v{{. for th(Mnon' peaceful clost> <»!" k'l iedi i( ii's icicji. 
r>nl a little considtM'ation shows that this ti'eatment 
v^ leally in accordance with artistic truth. I'Viediich 



Parer^a, 23 r 

tkl^, a^ 1)1^ rath/T \\'4i\ hfttw mt HAmlniiiirdUfr, And 
HH w^ h«v#r tj^^n )ri th/r acfJtHuihi VtMrUiSi Wilh^lm 

no nmtd to go Hi kn^ih Into th/t «am<^ ^abj^r^t »gafn. 
4/l<frttov(ir, tb^ rt^sntr^ of Kwro|)#*ftn ^ffalrft wft« pft««jr>|/ 
fliwfty from IVufe^la to Vram'^ for mnm yftarn Mort* 
VrMritU% <\t-M\h H^ no longer h/^W th/^ SmWur^- of 
pow*rr, rior ftttj i<i lu-f i t|j/^ *ry^« o/ tb*: wovUi, t^v^nt* 
v^t^rt^. |>r^|j^ring vv^t^t of tb*? f<bJn<? wbkb wttm to 
tbrow tbe rJitej>Mt^s> b^tw^r^n Aufctrk ftn4 Prufe^l^ into 
tbft ^bfl4*f. 

But |)^rb«p4^ tb^ mo«t r^^markabk f<efttur<^ of tb« 
wbol^ v/^rk j« tb^ almotit rf*Mk\fm 4a»b^«of bumour 
M\(\ \un v/birb tb^ Autbor ^MUivn ov^r k« |>ag^tj, 
U i« »lmo»t imj>o««>jbk to YmW^wa that tbis; Indignant 
propb^t of tb^ LaUcr Day l*amphlHti, wlio pour* out 
bl» *^Hil bi ft<?r<2ft 4<&nunclati/>n« of wo<e, i« tb^ «am4? 
n>^n wbo now, v^^rgbig t/^^wardt* bl« ^^v^nti^tb )ifHVf 
invfcnti? tiKr mofct bidi^^rou^^pjfb^t^ for bl^dij^f " •^"- 
I'o t^kfc A fif^w «t fM(4om ; w^ bav^ tb*r 'Mm t » 

mMi^%% Unck'V^* Wobgang WJUi^^lm ''the B^ 
feb'ippfcd ", *"* the '' ba<^>n-an4-grfeen§ " con^^l^n^^^^ of 
i'VMrl^'b V/ilb^bn/'^'^ tb«? '' ^upplism^ntary XwimsV^ 
(\)ofi Cm\(,^),^" i\\tz HaronmH vor) B^^ck^ndorf* 
"feplrbual rlr#rMmatij*m'V'^'* ^^'^ ''rapt Kurojx^an publw 
("ivbilbng gallery ^t^pfccially)/' an4 tli^ "4/^>tbab4Uj 
feblp^ " wUU\t " w<f^rft rapidly got butt^^iwi4 to- 

*"< I'rhulrkfi, vol.. i,, p, z'^/'/. ''^^ IhUl.^ p, (03, 

»"^' ///M, su\, »,, p, «9, '"'*' I hid,, ^,\n, 



232 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

gether."^^^ Friedrich is described as scattering ''a 
few commas and dashes, as if they were shaken out 
of a pepper-box, upon his page." ^^^ The famous 
Double Marriage project is represented as '' Murky- 
Nothingness put on to boil." ^^^ In the war of the 
Spanish Succession all Europe is seen '' changing 
colour seven times, like a lobster boiling." ^^^ The 
Byronic school of poetry is happily put as a ''me- 
lodious informing of the public what dreadful 
emotions you labour under," ^^^ and of the Battle of 
Prag Carlyle says, ''the very emblem of which, 
done on the piano by females of energy, scatters 
mankind to flight who love their ears." ^" Finally, it 
may be suggested that no better English equivalent 
could well be found for the common French expression 
infdme canaille, than Carlyle's "Ugly Doggery." ^^^ 

After all, the judgment which each man pronounces 
upon Carlyle's historical work will probably depend 
largely upon his notion of what history ought to be. 
If it be the duty of the historian merely to delineate 
one side of human life, the religious, the political, 
the speculative, then Carlyle will not be accounted 
a great historian. If it be to trace the successive 
links in an abstracted chain of events moving onwards 
by virtue of the laws of causation, neither in that 
case will Carlyle be deemed great. But if history 
be really an attempt at a picture of life, and suc- 

209 Friedrich, vol. viii., p. 181. ^is jj)id,^ p. 265. 

210 Ibid., vol. il, p. 50. 214 Jbid., vol. vii., p. 112. 
2'i Ibid., p. 54. 215 jfji^^ vol. iii., p. 222. 
212 Ibid.^ p. J']. 



Parerga. 233 

cessful as it approaches this ideal, then the verdict 
will be changed. For life is not all science, nor all 
politics, nor all speculation, nor is it all grave, nor all 
gay, but something which contains all these and 
more, which can be looked at from many standpoints, 
which appears in different lights to different men. 
And Carlyle, as a historian whose range of vision 
sweeps over the whole field of life, who thinks 
nothing too small to be noticed in its place, who can 
be fervid with a Cromwell, reckless with a Mirabeau, 
cool and cynical with a Friedrich, who has a firm 
grasp of the spiritual, but yet never forgets the 
material, — Carlyle, as a painter of life, has rarely 
been surpassed by any artist, and still more rarely 
by any artist calling himself a historian. 



CHAPTER VI. 

GLEANINGS. 

SYSTEM is a good thing, but it is not everything. 
Hitherto we have endeavoured to keep the 
furrows straight, and to work by a rule. Now it 
will be pleasant to look abroad over the fields, and 
wander carelessly up and down for a few moments 
in search of scattered ears. Let us be purposely 
unsystematic. 

Perhaps the fact most widely known, by mere 
count of heads, about Carlyle, is that he wrote in a 
very singular style. And in this instance the popular 
impression is correct — it ts a very singular style. 
The matter-of-fact reader finds Carlyle as puzzling 
as Mr. Browning, and is indignant that a mere prose 
writer should usurp the privilege accorded from time 
immemorial to those who cut their matter into lengths. 
" Who on earth is Smelfiingus ? " exclaims the be- 
wildered reader ; ^' and Sauerteig, and Professor Teu- 
felsdrockh, who are they ? No Lexikon, German or 
English, mentions their names. The town of IVeiss- 
nichtwo is not to be discovered on any atlas." And 
then he picks out some such passage as that which 
scared the critic of the Sun in 1834, making that 



Gleanings. 235 

bewildered luminary positively wink with amazement, 
and asks, in a tone of injured reproach, what, in the 
name of heaven, can be made out of that. 

The proper answer to such an objection is that the 
average person cannot understand a man of genius 
T)y simply looking at the back of one of his hands, 
still less by merely seeing his hat lying on the table. 
He must enquire a little farther. 

There are two styles in use among great writers, 
the personal and the impersonal. The latter affords 
no clue to the character of the writer, it is simply 
the most convenient vehicle for the expression of his 
thought. That is the style of Virgil, Shakspere, and 
Goethe. If we fashion for ourselves any picture of 
these authors, it is from the substance and not from 
the form of their works that we take our material. 
And by general consent this is allowed to be the 
supreme perfection of style. But there is another 
method, the personal, also adopted by great writers. 
This conveys to us a striking likeness of the author 
himself, and though it may be inferior to the other 
from the point of view of artistic excellence, it is far 
more interesting as a study. This is the style of 
Horace, Dante, Milton, and Carlyle. Beneath the 
transparent skin of their language we see the easy- 
going, kindly man of the world, the stern, passionate 
Florentine, the pure, scholarly, but slightly un- 
sympathetic Puritan poet, and the fiery prophet of 
Craigenputtock. The language of Carlyle is a picture 
of Carlyle himself; the qualities we find in it are 
human, not technical. He tells us that he picked it 



236 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

up in the home at Scotsbrig — that is to say, that 
it is the natural acquirement of his native character. 
It is abrupt, restless, vivid, varied, impetuous, elo- 
quent, but occasionally obscure, as he himself was. 
When it is dealing with spiritual conflict, it is 
naturally mysterious and imaginative, for Carlyle 
had no ''pet little hypothesis" of the universe. 
When it is used to denounce imposture and sordid- 
ness, it becomes fierce and impetuous. When it 
tells of the life of a dead friend, it is gentle and full 
of sad melody. A man is not always in one mood, 
he would be a strangely uninteresting creature if he 
were. If we are really anxious to understand and 
appreciate a human being, we are not satisfied with 
glancing at him for a single moment, it may be an 
unfavourable one. Those who know only the 
stormy figure of the Latter Day Pamphlets may well 
be surprised to see the gentle form bending over the 
lace-cushion of the poor worker at Ghent, or leading 
beggars across the London streets. But as we 
should pause before condemning an acquaintance 
on the score of a chance glimpse, so we should 
beware of accusing a writer of obscurity because we 
find difficulties in a single work which we happen 
to take up. I, for one, can quite certainly say that 
there is not a single sentence in all Carlyle's pub- 
lished writings that is not as clear as the noon-day 
to me. But in order to understand Carlyle's works 
you must know and appreciate the man himself. 

It is quite certain that in the regular features of 
style upon which authors pride themselves, Carlyle 



Gleanings. 237 

was in no sense deficient. The gift of throwing into 
a few very simple words a picture which haunts the 
memory for ever afterwards is the prerogative of 
only the very greatest writers, as the power of weav- 
ing a massive melody out of the simplest materials is 
fhe prerogative of the masters only of music. Yet 
this power Carlyle certainly had. Everyone remem- 
bers the words — " Coleridge sat on the brow of 
Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on 
London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped 
from the inanity of life's battle." ^^® And there is 
another passage, equally striking in a similar way, 
which is only less widely remembered because 
Friedrich is less widely read than the Life of 
Sterling. '' Illuminated Berhn shone like noon all 
that night (the beginning of a Gaudeamus which 
lasted miscellaneously for weeks) — but the King 
stole away to see a friend who was dying ; that poor 
Duhan de Jaudun, his early schoolmaster, who had 
suffered much for him, and whom he always much 
loved." ^^'' This is not Carlyle's general way, of 
course ; he oftener overpowers us by a torrent of 
magnetic words, such as those in the famous pas- 
sages of Sartor and the Pamphlets. But it is clear 
that when he was sufficiently subdued in spirit to 
allow scope to his gentler nature, he could be as 
tender as Lamb himself, and as witty. Here is a 
joke turned out with a neatness which professional 
humorists have rarely surpassed. It is from the 

2^^ Life of Sterling, p. 48. 
2^^ Friedrich, vol. vi., p. 126. 



238 Thomas Carlyle and Jo/ui Stuart AJilL 

account of his wanderings in Germany to gather 
materials for Friedrich. '' Eckermann himself is at 
Berhn — one day may very well suffice in Berlin." 
Even Calverl}^ might have envied this. Nor could 
anything be more mirth-provoking than Carlyle's 
way of telling a story. Listen to his description of 
what most men would have regarded as an ugly, 
but perfectly commonplace incident. He had been 
compelled to serve on a jury, not having the courage 
to '' register himself as a Dissenting preacher." 
After two long days of weary attendance, everything 
had been done except the delivery of the verdict. 
Carlyle and ten others of the twelve were completely 
agreed. But one man made a point of standing out. 

" Conceive our humour. Not a particle of dinner, nerves 
worn out, etc. The refractory man — a thickset, llai-headed 
sack — erected himself in his chair and- said, ' 1 am one of the 
firmest-minded men in England. I know this room pretty 
well. I have starved out three juries here already.' Reason- 
ing, demonstration, was of no avail at all. They began to 
suspect he had been bribed. He looked really at one time as 
if he would keep us till half-past nine in the morning, and then 
get us dismissed, the whole trial to begin again. One really 
could not help laughing, though one had a notion to kill the 
beast. ' Do not argue with him,' I said. ' Flatter him. Don't 
you see he has the obstinacy of a boar, and little more sense 
in that head of his than in a Swedish turnip ? ' It was a head 
all cheeks, jaw, and no brow, of shape somewhat like a great 
ball of putty dropped from a height. I set to work upon 
him ; we all set to work, and in about an hour after our ' with- 
drawal,' the Hash^ I pulling him by the arm, was got stirred 
from his chair — one of the gladdest moments I had seen for a 
month — and in a few instants more we were all rejoicing on 
our road home."^^® 

Irresistible also is the sketch, though merely a 
2^^ Carlyle, Second Forty, vol. i., p. 206. 



Gleanings. 239 

few scratches, of the interview which Carlyle had 
with Baron Rothschild, when the latter came to ask 
him to write a pamphlet in favour of the Jewish 
Disabilities Bill. 

" I had to tell him it couldn't be ; but I observed, too, that I 
^ould not conceive why he and his friends, who were supposed 
to be looking out for the coming of Shiloh, should be seeking 
seats in a Gentile legislature/' 

When asked what Baron Rothschild had replied, 
Carlyle went on — 

" Why, he seemed to think that the coming of Shiloh was a 
dubious business, and that meanwhile, etc., etc."^^'-* 

Evidently this humour must have been rather 
embarrassing at times. 

Much has been said of the intolerance which 
Carlyle showed in his criticisms of men with whom 
he was brought into contact, and there is un- 
doubtedly some foundation for the accusation. But 
it must be remembered that the indifference to 
blemish which proceeds from ignorance or cowardice 
is a different thing from the tolerance which is the 
outcome of a really noble and catholic spirit. 
Carlyle's insight was too keen to allow him to be 
blind to faults and weaknesses, and he was too 
conscientious to pretend an admiration for talents 
which did not exist. Moreover, he had not the 
comfortable optimism which calmly accepts all the 
evil and meanness of life as inevitable. And it must 
also be remembered that, with scarcely an exception, 
his verdicts have been confirmed by the court of 
^'^ Carlyle, Second Forty ^ p. 419. 



240 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, 

posterity. That gift, which is the rarest of all critical 
gifts, the power of judging contemporaries as time 
will eventually judge them, Carlyle possessed to a 
remarkable degree. Hence his criticisms often 
sound almost like the words of one gifted with 
second sight. The only man who can really fore- 
tell the future is the man who can actually read the 
present, for the future is, with literal scientific truth, 
in the present, and the true magician must look for 
his inspiration not in the stars or in mystic runes, 
but in the world of men around him. 

And Carlyle was never guilty of the sin of keeping 
one measure for his neighbour's faults and another 
for his own. His letters and diaries show that he 
judged himself unsparingly. But he knew that the 
work he did was thorough, and having once done 
his best he was not ashamed of it. PVom quite an 
early period we find him quoting his own writings, 
though he never attained to the sublimity of writing 
a poem or essay upon himself. That audacity was 
reserved for a child of the unconscious West. But 
he felt that what he had written was true, and 
would bear repetition. We laugh at Disraeli for 
quoting his own epigrams in his Life of Lord George 
Bentinck and his Endymion, but we laugh with 
Carlyle when he recalls the extravagances of Herr 
Sauerteig's Pig- Philosophy. 

Nor, in fact, is it possible to read Carlyle's works 
without becoming perfectly convinced of the thorough- 
ness of the labour which entitled him to be thus con- 
fident. Everywhere there are proofs that each date 



Gleanini^s. 241 

and name, as it came to light, was followed up till its 
accuracy and meaning were fully tested. To Carlyle 
we owe the explosion of such historical fallacies as 
the scene between Maria 'I hciresa and the Hungarian 
Qiet, the conversation between the columns at 
Fontenoy, and the dramatic fiction of the sinking of 
the Vengeur. He discovered Chodowiecki long before 
the artistic world of England began to take any interest 
in him."'^''"' lie traces the regiments which went with 
Braddock to America back to their appearance at 
Prest3n-pans.^^^ Finding that there are two Fu( hs- 
bergs and four Neisse rivers in various parts oi 
Germany, he will not rest till he has made his reader 
clearly understand the difference between each, though 
many another writer would have passed the matter 
by as unimportant.''^^^ He pounces on the misprint of 
a single letter in the Reich's proclamation of 1759, 
whereby an eilende (''speedy") army is made to 
appear an cMmde (" miserable ") army.^^'^ He recog- 
nizes Tobias Smollett on the Carthagena expedition 
of 1741,''^^^ and even goes so far as to correct a 
Hungarian oath on his own responsibility.^^'' 

It is not easy to treat Mill in this erratic way. As 
the attractiveness .of Carlyle arises largely from his 
irregularity, so the worth of Mill hes principally in 
his evenness. Through all his works there runs the 
same high moral tone, with the same low emotional 
note, rarely rising to anything above temperate. 'Hie 

•m Jiyiedricli, vol. i., p. 317, and note. ^^'* Ihid., vol. vii., p. V^6. 
-=*' Ihld., vol. vi., ['. 306. ^^•* Ibid., vol. iv., \). 279. 

^^^ Ibid., p. 55. sfa.--, iljid.^ vol. iii., jj. 171. 

16 



2^2 'rJio}}uis Car/ylc and /o/ifi S/iiar/ Rlill. 

ii;i(I('r nlways knows where to liiul Mill ; tiiere is no 
dan/^ci of his being startled by sudden discoveries. 
As a siicntific teaeher he is adniirabh^ for the very 
reason that he never allows his leclings to iniluence 
his int(He(>tnal perceptions. Hut for the same reason 
he is (Idiciciil ;is a spiiiliial _L;uido. In this capacity 
we ni'cd an cNidcut cut hiisiasm, a Schnuiriiirrri. Life 
is in Mill's writings a great perhaps, and one cannot 
help thinking that there must have beon some defect 
in the personality of the man who could accej^t such 
a condition. It was possibi*' loi- him to do this 
becaus(i ho worked unremittingly in on(> i>rovince 
of lif(\ rarely casting his eyes beyond it. Ilt^ was 
like the dwt'ller on th(> sea-shore, to whom his 
cottage and iit^lds are the t)idy realities, and who 
has no soul foi the (>verlasting murnnu' of the ocean 
which breaks at his (cet. 

So w(^ will lea\(> Mill in his c(^mpleteness, as we 
leave Carlyle in his ruggetlness, and (MkI our day's 
labour by recalling one other feature by which these 
two, so unlike in most things else, can be recognized 
as brothers. 

Each had {\\v instincts of a soldier. This is com- 
mon enough with the heroes of the scientific school, 
the logic of their uk thods disposes them to debate 
and vvarfart\ Hut it is not so sure a thing to find the 
soldii r in the Iranscendentalist. Swedenborg and tlu^ 
German mystics stand aloof from the (juaifels of tiie 
world, in calm disdain connuuning with the eternal 
oracles. V,\r\\ in America, ICmerson is only " morti- 
fied " by iiis countrymen's vice ; it is tluMr virtut^ their 



Gleanifif^s. 243 

Rour and narrow virtue, that makes liim ashamed. I le 
will enter into none of their philanthropies, and war 
against none of tlieir creeds. '1 ii<jreau withdraws to 
the solitude of Walden, to lead his perfect life out of 
hiring of the voices and footfalls of men. And to 
Walt Wliitman everything is and remains alike good. 
But with Carlyle transcendentalism descends into 
the market-place, and calls on all men to repent. It 
is not content with speaking in an unknown tongue, 
but must translate its meaning i/iio the common 
speech, and deal with the commou tilings of life. 
Emerson said of himself, " My whole philosophy 
teaches acquiescence and optimism."'^-" Imagine this 
as Carlyle's motto. Mr. John Morley has complained 
of Emerson that '' he does almost as little as Carlyle 
himself to fire men with faith jji social progress as 
the crown of wise endeavour," ^-^ and this is, of course, 
exactly the kind of remark that one expects from 
Mr. John Morley, who rarely misses an opportunity 
of mounting the stump. Hut we shall venture to 
think that in awakening the minds of men to the fact 
that there is a world above and beyoji<l the world 
of dogmas and formulas, political or other, Carlyle 
arrested a degradi/ig tendency in the lives of English- 
men towards a grovelling faith in the complete 
omnipotence of the almighty dollar, and a fetish- 
worship of the infallibility of the odd man. The 
very claim which the admirers of Carlyle make for 
him is, tliat Ik^ lived closer to the facts of life than 

ms Correspondence of Carlyle and Junerson, vol. i., p, 342. 
"■'^^ Introdiirtioii to lufierson's Works, 1884, vol. i,, j*. lix. 



244 Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. 

those who called him unpractical and vague, and 
he himself was firmly convinced that the current 
political doctrines of his day had as little foundation 
in fact as the most airy speculations of gymno- 
sophism. Before his critics take upon them to treat 
his teaching as a thing remote from the region of 
practical life, it were well that they should grapple 
once for all with these distinct claims. It is not a 
little curious that those from whose lips such de- 
preciatory remarks so glibly fall, are in most cases 
men who pride themselves on their liberality and 
freedom from prejudice. As a matter of fact they are 
the real obstructionists who refuse to accept teaching 
unless it comes in the form of the old jingles which 
they have learnt to talk almost in their sleep. 

So, then, we leave these two, as soldiers whose 
battles are over. In different ranks they fought, 
but under the same banners — of Truth against False- 
hood, of Light against Darkness. Far apart lie their 
bones, those by the sunny waters of the south, these 
under the cold snows of their northern biithplace. 
But they, where are they ? Do they now look down 
upon the battle-field where they fought so well in 
the days that are past ? And can they feel for us, 
who, with feebler steps, are pressing on the ways 
which they have won ? 



Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 









:\>-/-y: 




^. 



"<. 






o 0^ 



:;^'" 



o-^ -^ci 



.%'^ 


"■fu. v^^ 


-"/ft^ 




x'^°. 


*r ' ■ 




;> C 


=./'' 




■ // 


c> 


•%/- 


»"■{'■' 




.sx> -. 




; ^c:^<c. 




:^" 






•\^ 






'■^^ ' 6 il ^ \\ , I « 









^^- C^^ 



.^' 






,0> ■"^>. 






,0- 






A ^ 






. &w4i ^ 


^^' - 


^ J%i>^ V , 




^. '**\# 




■'^. c^^ -^ 





:^~" -^ 



/ . . - " N 



•^c. 



o 0' 










.)>N 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: iVIagnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

PreservationTechnoIogies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

, 111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 






s^ 






'^.*- 



-S' '^ 



-^ 






-/- 



o. 



o 0^ 















,^ / 



:§.i 



0> "Ci. 



<^ c- 



,^ 



> -y^'. 



l^ %.^' 



#• 



. ^^ 0sryf^^-> 



^v 



i^' 






oo^ 



-^^ c^ 



'^^> .^^' 
.s \ 



.^>' 






^Vi^ 



o>- 






o» o 






''•^^ ,<\' 




k 



.) .. ; 



.;.;. >| 



!il''i' 



m\ 



